is deteriorating rapidly. I won't let it happen. I'll fight it. I can't help thinking of the boy in the restaurant, the blank expression, the silly smile, the people laughing at him. No-please-not that again... June 22 I'm forgetting things that I learned recently. It seems to be following
the classic pattern-the last things learned are the first things forgotten. Or
is that the pattern? I'd better look it up again.... I reread my paper on the Algernon-Gordon Effect and I get the strange feeling that it was written by someone else. There are parts I don't even
understand. Motor activity impaired. I keep tripping over things, and it becomes increasingly difficult to type.
June 23 I've given up using the typewriter completely. My co-ordination is bad. I feel that I'm moving slower and slower. Had a terrible shock today. I picked up a copy of an article I used in my research, Krueger's Uber psychis- che Ganzheit, to see if it would help me understand what I had done. First
I thought there was something wrong with my eyes. Then I realized I could
no longer read German. I tested myself in other languages. All gone.
June 30 A week since I dared to write again. It's slipping away like sand through my fingers. Most of the books I have are too hard for me now. I get angry with them because I know that I read and understood them just a few weeks ago.
I keep telling myself I must keep writing these reports so that somebody will know what is happening to me. But it gets harder to form the words and
remember spellings. I have to look up even simple words in the dictionary
now and it makes me impatient with myself. Dr. Strauss comes around almost every day, but I told him I wouldn't see or speak to anybody. He feels guilty. They all do. But I don't blame anyone. I knew what might happen. But how it hurts.
July 7 I don't know where the week went. Todays Sunday I know because I can see through my window people going to church. I think I stayed in bed all week but I remember Mrs. Flynn bringing food to me a few times. I keep saying over and over Ive got to do something but then I forget or maybe its just easier not to do what I say Im going to do.
I think of my mother and father a lot these days. I found a picture of them with me taken at a beach. My father has a big ball under his arm and my mother is holding me by the hand. I dont remember them the way they are in the picture. All I remember is my father drunk most of the time and arguing with mom about money.
He never shaved much and he used to scratch my face when he hugged me. My mother said he died but Cousin Miltie said he heard his mom and dad say that my father ran away with another woman. When I asked my mother she slapped my face and said my father was dead. I dont think I ever found out which was true but I don't care much. (He said he was going to take me to see cows on a farm once but he never did. He never kept his promises...)
July 10 My landlady Mrs Flynn is very worried about me. She says the way I lay around all day and dont do anything I remind her of her son before she threw him out of the house. She said she doesn't like loafers. If Im sick its one thing, but if Im a loafer thats another thing and she wont have it. I told her I think Im sick. I try to read a little bit every day, mostly stories, but sometimes I have
to read the same thing over and over again because I dont know what it
means. And its hard to write. I know I should look up all the words in the
dictionary but its so hard and Im so tired all the time. Then I got the idea that I would only use the easy words instead of the long hard ones. That saves time. I put flowers on Algernons grave about once a week. Mrs Flynn thinks Im crazy to put flowers on a mouses grave but I told her that Algernon was special.
