flowers for Algernon

chapter 18: progress report 14 april 21

April 21 Still didn't go into the factory. I told Mrs. Flynn my landlady to call

and tell Mr. Donnegan I was sick. Mrs. Flynn looks at me very funny lately

like she's scared of me.

I think it's a good thing about finding out how everybody laughs at me.

I thought about it a lot. It's because I'm so dumb and I don't even know when

I'm doing something dumb. People think it's funny when a dumb person can't

do things the same way they can.

Anyway, now I know I'm getting smarter every day. I know punctuation

and I can spell good. I like to look up all the hard words in the dictionary and

I remember them. I'm reading a lot now, and Miss Kinnian says I read very

fast. Sometimes I even understand what I'm reading about, and it stays in my

mind. There are times when I can close my eyes and think of a page and it

all comes back like a picture.

Besides history, geography, and arithmetic, Miss Kinnian said I should

start to learn a few foreign languages. Dr. Strauss gave me some more tapes

to play while I sleep. I still don't understand how that conscious and uncon-

scious mind works, but Dr. Strauss says not to worry yet. He asked me to

promise that when I start learning college subjects next week I wouldn't read

any books on psychology-that is, until he gives me permission.

I feel a lot better today, but I guess I'm still a little angry that all the time

people were laughing and making fun of me because I wasn't so smart. When

I become intelligent like Dr. Strauss says, with three times my LO. of 68, then

maybe I'll be like everyone else and people will like me and be friendly.

I'm not sure what an LO. is. Dr. Nemur said it was something that

measured how intelligent you were-like a scale in the drugstore weighs

pounds. But Dr. Strauss had a big argument with him and said an LO. didn't

weigh intelligence at all. He said an LO. showed how much intelligence you could get, like the numbers on the outside of a measuring cup. You still had

to fill the cup up with stuff.

Then when I asked Burt, who gives me my intelligence tests and works

with Algernon, he said that both of them were wrong (only I had to promise

not to tell them he said so). Burt says that the 1.0. measures a lot of different

things including some of the things you learned already, and it really isn't any

good at all.

So I still don't know what LO. is except that mine is going to be over 200

soon. I didn't want to say anything, but I don't see how if they don't know

what it is, or where it is-I don't see how they know how much of it you've

got.

Dr. Nemur says I have to take a Rorshach Test tomorrow. I wonder what

that is.

April 22 I found out what a Rorshach is. It's the test I took before the

operation-the one with the inkblots on the pieces of cardboard. The man

who gave me the test was the same one.

I was scared to death of those inkblots. I knew he was going to ask me

to find the pictures and I knew I wouldn't be able to. I was thinking to myself,

if only there was some way of knowing what kind of pictures were hidden

there. Maybe there weren't any pictures at all. Maybe it was just a trick to see

if I was dumb enough to look for something that wasn't there. Just thinking

about that made me sore at him.

"All right, Charlie," he said, "you've seen these cards before, remember?"

"Of course I remember."

The way I said it, he knew I was angry, and he looked surprised. "Yes,

of course. Now I want you to look at this one. What might this be? What do

you see on this card? People see all sorts of things in these inkblots. Tell me

what it might be for you-what it makes you think of."

I was shocked. That wasn't what I had expected him to say at all. "You

mean there are no pictures hidden in those inkblots?"

He frowned and took off his glasses. "What?"

"Pictures. Hidden in the inkblots. Last time you told me that everyone

could see them and you wanted me to find them too."

He explained to me that the last time he had used almost the exact same

words he was using now. I didn't believe it, and I still have the suspicion that

he misled me at the time just for the fun of it. Unless-I don't know any

more-could I have been that feeble-minded?

We went through the cards slowly. One of them looked like a pair of bats

tugging at something. Another one looked like two men fencing with swords.

I imagined all sorts of things. I guess I got carried away. But I didn't trust him

any more, and I kept turning them around and even looking on the back to

see if there was anything there I was supposed to catch. While he was making

his notes, I peeked out of the corner of my eye to read it. But it was all in code

that looked like this:

WF +A DdF-Ad orig. WF-A SF+ obj The test still doesn't make sense to me. It seems to me that anyone could

make up lies about things that they didn't really see. How could he know I

wasn't making a fool of him by mentioning things that I didn't really imagine?

Maybe I'll understand it when Dr. Strauss lets me read up on psychology.