Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon

She said; You, got. to-mix? them! up: She showd? me” how, to mix! them; up, and now! I can. mix (up all? kinds of punctuation- in, my. writing! There” are lots, of rules; to learn? but. Im’ get’ting them in my head: One thing? I, like: about, Dear Miss Kinnian: (thats~ the way? it goes; in a business, letter (if I ever go! into business?) is that, she: always; gives me’ a reason” when-I ask. She“s a genius! I wish? I cou’d be smartlike-her; Punctuation, is? fun!

April 8-What a dope I am! I didn’t even understand what she was talking about. I read the grammar book last night and it explains the whole thing. Then I saw it was the same way as Miss Kinnian was trying to tell me, but I didn’t get it. I got up in the middle of the night and the whole thing straightened out in my mind.

Miss Kinnian said that the TV working, just before I fell asleep and during the night, helped out. She said I reached a plateau. That’s like the flat top of a hill.

After I figured out how punctuation worked, I read over all my old progress reports from the beginning. Boy, did I have crazy spelling and punctuation! I told Miss Kinnian I ought to go over the pages and fix all the mistakes, but she said, “No, Charlie, Professor Nemur wants them just as they are. That’s why he lets you keep them after they’re photostated-to see your own progress. You’re coming along fast, Charlie.”

That made me feel good. After the lesson I went down and played with Algernon. We don’t race any more.

April 10-I feel sick. Not like for a doctor, but inside my chest it feels empty, like getting punched and a heartburn at the same time. I wasn’t going to write about it, but I guess I got to, because it’s important. Today was the first day I ever stayed home from work on purpose. Last night Joe Carp and Frank Reilly invited me to a party. There were lots of girls and Gimpy was there and Ernie too. I remembered how sick I got last time I drank too much, so I told Joe I didn’t want to drink anything. He gave me a plain coke instead. It tasted funny, but I thought it was just a bad taste in my mouth. We had a lot of fun for a while.

“Dance with Ellen,” Joe said. “She’ll teach you the steps.” Then he winked at her like he had something in his eye. She said, “Why don’t you leave him alone?”

He slapped me on the back. “This is Charlie Gordon, my buddy, my pal. He’s no ordinary guy-he’s been promoted to working on the dough-mixing machine. All I did was ask you to dance with him and give him a good time. What’s wrong with that?”

He pushed me up close against her. So she danced with me. I fell three times and I couldn’t understand why because no one else was dancing besides Ellen and me. And all the time I was tripping because somebody’s foot was always sticking out.

They were all around in a circle watching and laughing at the way we were doing the steps. They laughed harder every time I fell, and I was laughing too because it was so funny. But the last time it happened I didn’t laugh. I picked myself up and Joe pushed me down again. Then I saw the look on Joe’s face and it gave me a funny feeling in my stomach.

“He’s a scream,” one of the girls said. Everybody was laughing. “Oh, you were right, Frank,” choked Ellen. “He’s a one man side show.” Then she said, “Here, Charlie, have a fruit.” She gave me an apple, but when I bit into it, it was fake.

Then Frank started laughing and he said, “I told ya he’d eat it. C’n you imagine anyone dumb enough to eat wax fruit?”

Joe said, “I ain’t laughed so much since we sent him around the corner to see if it was raining that night we ditched him at Halloran’s.” Then I saw a picture that I remembered in my mind when I was a kid and the children in the block let me play with them, hide-and-go-seek and I was IT. After I counted up to ten over and over on my fingers I went to look for the others. I kept looking until it got cold and dark and I had to go home. But I never found them and I never knew why.

What Frank said reminded me. That was the same thing that happened at Halloran’s. And that was what Joe and the rest of them were doing. Laughing at me. And the kids playing hide-and-go-seek were playing tricks on me and they were laughing at me too.

The people at the party were a bunch of blurred faces all looking down and laughing at me.

“Look at him. His face is red.”

“He’s blushing. Charlie’s blushing.”

“Hey, Ellen, what’d you do to Charlie? I never saw him act like this before.”

“Boy, Ellen sure got him worked up.”

I didn’t know what to do or where to turn. Her rubbing up against me made me feel funny. Everyone was laughing at me and all of a sudden I felt naked. I wanted to hide myself so they wouldn’t see. I ran out of the apartment. It was a large apartment house with lots of halls and I couldn’t find my way to the staircase. I forgot all about the elevator. Then, after, I found the stairs and ran out into the street and walked for a long time before I went to my room. I never knew before that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around just to make fun of me.

Now I know what they mean when they say “to pull a Charlie Gordon.” I’m ashamed.

And another thing. I dreamed about that girl Ellen dancing and rubbing up against me and when I woke up the sheets were wet and messy.

April 13-Still didn’t go back to work at the bakery. I told Mrs. Flynn, my landlady, to call and tell hf. Donner I’m 30 sick. Mrs. Flynn looks at me 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 a little 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. And I try to write these progress reports very careful but that’s hard to do. I am reading a lot now, and Miss Kinnian says I read very fast. And I even understand a lot of the things I’m reading about, and they stay 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.

But other things come into my head too. Sometimes I close my eyes and I see a clear picture. Like this morning just after I woke up, I was laying in bed with my eyes open. It was like a big hole opened up in the walls of my mind and I can just walk through. I think its far back… a long time ago when I first started working at Donner’s Bakery. I see the street where the bakery is. Fuzzy at first and then it gets patchy with some things so real they are right here now in front of me, and other things stay blurred, and I’m not sure....

A little old man with a baby carriage made into a pushcart with a charcoal burner, and the smell of roasting chestnuts, and snow on the ground. A young fellow, skinny with wide eyes and a scared look on his face looking up at the store sign. What does it say? Blurred letters in a way that don’t make sense. I know now that the sign says DONNER’S BAKERY, but looking back in my memory at the sign I can’t read the words through his eyes. None of the signs make sense. I think that fellow with the scared look on his face is me. Bright neon lights. Christmas trees and sidewalk peddlers. People bundled in coats with collars up and scarves around their necks. But he has no gloves. His hands are cold and he puts down a heavy bundle of brown paper bags. He’s stopping to watch the little mechanical toys 31 that the peddler winds up-the tumbling bear, the dog jumping, the seal spinning a ball on its nose. Tumbling, jumping, spinning. If he had all those toys for himself he would be the happiest person in the world. He wants to ask the red-faced peddler, with his fingers sticking through the brown cotton gloves, if he can hold the tumbling bear for a minute, but he is afraid. He picks up the bundle of paper bags and puts it on his shoulder. He is skinny but he is strong from many years of hard work. “Charlie! Charlie!… fat head barley!”