I follow him on a wooden ladder when he heads to find his old childhood bedroom in the basement. Now it is a neat guest room, but the young Bill spent hours, even days, “thinking”, according to his sisters.
At one point, his mother was so tired of the mess that she confiscated any item she found on the floor, and she was charged with a stubborn son 25 cents to return it. “I started wearing less clothes,” he says.
So far, it has been fascinated by coding, and with some school members provided with technology, access to one local firm’s computer in return for any problems. Obsessed with learning to program on those charged days of the technological revolution, he made his way through the window of his bedroom, not knowing that the parents got more time on the computer.
“Do you think you could do it now?” I ask.
It begins to unwind the catch and opens the window. “It’s not that difficult,” he says with a smile when he rises up and goes out. “It’s not difficult.”