Flowers for Algernon

Posted November 6th, 2008 by Kimberly Dowd

When I was a young’un, I was very very smart. I read early and I was fantastic in school. I could
performed better in high school, but by the time I reached the end of my junior year, I knew all I could afford would be the state college. Since my grades were already good enough for that, why bother reaching for all A’s? But I was still smart. I cruised my way through college with a nice A-/B+ average. Could’ve done much better, but didn’t care to.

After all, I was smart.

Fast forward to present time. Names only stay in my head briefly. I’ve been teaching myself PHP unsuccessfully for, what, 4 years now? My vocabulary has become…has become…less gooder. I confuse words and muck up cliches. Consumer technology becomes harder and harder to master.

It calls to mind a book I read in middle school – Flowers for Algernon.

Summary:

• Lab creates drug that makes dumb mouse smarter
• Lab tries drug on mentally-challenged janitor.
• Janitor become super smart
• Mouse reverts to dumbness and croaks.
• Janitor realizes he, too, will be dumb again.
• Janitor becomes dumb again, but cruelly REMEMBERS he used to be smart.
• Tired of being pitied, he moves away from everyone he knows and starts over in a state home.

(isn’t it amazing that we all aren’t emo, given what they made us read in school?)

So in the “now” where my younger brother can beat me handily in Scrabble, and I’m my Facebook friends’ resident punching bag in Scramble, I wonder if I just grew into a brain that was very smart for a youngster and average for an adult, or completely losing it a la Algernon.

How about you? Do you find yourself dumbing down as you get older? Tell me I’m not alone here.

Tags: intelligence, memories, paranoia