Michael Ayers was a defense attorney in the making.
When he asked a question and didn’t agree with the answer, he developed a long explanation filled with his own thoughts and arguments. When the teachers at his child care facility requested he return a toy to one of his peers, Michael, 2, said he did not steal, but rather borrowed, the item.
“They say he was his mother’s son because he could have a conversation with pretty much anyone,” Hollie Ayers told msnbc. Ayers referred to her son as a “little greeter” at child care because he was friendly and enthusiastic.
Living in rural Belleville, Pa., Michael had a passion for construction and transportation vehicles, especially John Deere tractors and lawn mowers. He favored reading “Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site” before bed, and he connected pillows into a row and pretended to ride a tractor while his mom sat in a wagon. He browsed Sears and Lowe’s catalogs, telling his mother the family needed a leaf blower instead of using plain-old rakes to clean their yard.
Michael occasionally asked to sit on his teacher’s back for a mock tractor ride. When she told him she was “out of gas,” he retrieved an item and pretended to refill her fuel. And when she was “broken,” he placed a screwdriver at her hip to fix her. He once tried to comfort a crying infant with his toy tractor.









