George does have an interesting past. His family history has a hereditary factor with a number of people going back at least 4 generations who displayed signs of neurological disability (sometimes severe) adjacent to abilities such as fixing clocks, being fascinated with weather patterns, numbers, and self-taught musicians. George displayed moderate autistic behavior in early childhood such as walking on his toes, grunting instead of speaking, aggression, and frequent temper tantrums. He was hyperlexia also with a reading capacity well beyond his age. At a time when 'Aspergers Syndrome' was unheard of, he showed improvement at age 6 and was enrolled in public elementary school where he displayed some signs of giftedness (dominating in any subject associated with rote memory) alongside odd, eccentric behavior (getting to school early so he could sit in a quiet darkened hallway and watch the red 'Exit' sign). At other times, walking to school with others, he would often count the passing cars, houses, sidewalk cracks or do a song like counting of the 'powers of two' (a lifelong interest) up to 1, 099, 511, 627, 776 (2 to 40th power). He remembers seeing his grandmother's calendar at age 7 and being absolutely fascinated with it, although his calendar abilities at that time were of a much smaller caliber than they became later on.

George managed to graduate high school and enlisted in the US military for four years. In the Air Force, he was noted for social difficulties (preferring to stay in his room working on his collection of travel brochures and drawing) , and often eccentric interests yet quite competent in his job as a camera technician. On weekends he would sometimes fly to a foreign country he had only read about, spend a few hours walking around the airport, and then fly back. Upon his Honorable Discharge, George's autism became more of a challenge to him as he tried to live an independent life without the rigid organized structure the military had given him. He worked jobs such as house painter and unskilled construction laborer and took some basic Liberal Arts college courses. At one point he was the top student in several basic science classes, yet fearful to take a new route across the campus! He had been diagnosed as a teenager as a 'schizoid' personality combined with depression. An astute counselor later correctly recognized that George's lifelong social awkwardness, his amazing memory, and his repetitve behaviors pointed to High Functioning Autism rather than any mental illness. He was formally diagnosed with Aspergers at the New England Medical Center of Boston in 2001.