There's a line in the Disney story "Cars" that reads, "Sally was touched." It's the moment when the main car's girlfriend is overwhelmed by emotion when the neon lights of her Route 66 town are lit up for the first time in decades.

Billy loves "Cars." He doesn't call it "Cars," though. He calls it "Mater," after his favorite character. He loves the movie; he loves the books. He loves the matchbox-sized replicas of the characters. He loves his Mater-themed Pullups and his sippy cup with Lightning McQueen on it. If you have a kid going through a Cars phase, at first you consider yourself in luck, because it's everywhere. Then one day, you look around yourself and realize, "It's...everywhere."

So anyway, Sally was touched. Billy repeats this line as he reaches out his pointer finger and pokes me in the nose. "Sally was ... touched." Poke. Again and again. Sally was touched. Poke.

See? He's touching me.

It's almost like he realizes that he doesn't quite get this line. So he's working it out by thinking aloud.

A lot has been written about how literal autistic people can be, how they often don't get jokes or understand metaphor or irony. So I've been going out of my way to explain this line every time it comes up. "Sally was touched," I say, "means that she was happy, that she felt love. She was touched in her heart." And I pat myself on the chest.

Billy stares at my hand patting my chest. He's thinking.

Poke. "Mama was touched." He smiles. And for the millionth time, I wonder how much he actually knows.

It's like when we were practicing egg hunting this week at his friend EJ's house. Billy loves finding the eggs this year. He'll spot one, his face will light up and he'll go tearing across the yard toward it.

Then he opens it up, eats the candy out of it, and leaves the open plastic egg lying in his hiding place. I looked around the yard at one point and saw half a dozen plastic eggs, broken open and still lying in their hiding place, his basket long since abandoned.

I took his hand, led him to a hidden egg, and showed him how to pick it up and put it in the basket. He sighed, and moved on to the next egg, dutifully picking it up and dropping it in the basket. Then he started singing the "Clean up" song while he worked.

Any parent with a child in preschool knows the "Cleanup song:" Clean up, Clean up/Everybody everywhere/Clean up, clean up/Everybody does their share."

Dave watched him for a second and laughed. "You know," he said in his English accent, "I think Billy has a point. Easter egg hunting is a little bit like bleedin' 'clean up, clean up.'"

One of these days, Billy's gonna be watching "Cars" and finally turn to me and ask, "How can a car have a girlfriend? Or a condo in Hawaii? And if they're all cars, who changes their oil? And who installed the hardwood floors and ceiling fans in the court house?"

And then I'll know he's going to be just fine.