you were—like a scale in the drugstore weighs pounds. But Dr. Strauss had a big argument with him and said an I.Q. didn't weigh intelligence at all. He said an I.Q. 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.
When I asked Burt Seldon, who gives me my intelligence tests and works with Algernon, he said that some people would say both of them were wrong and according to the things he's been reading up on, the I.Q. measures a lot of different things including some of the things you learned already and it really isn't a good measure of intelligence at all.
So I still don't know what I.Q. is, and everybody says it's something different. Mine is about a hundred now, and it's going to be over a hundred and fifty soon, but they'll still have to fill me up with the stuff. 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—how they know how much of it you've got.
Prof Nemur says I have to take a Rorschach Test the day after tomorrow. I wonder what that is.
April 17—I had a nightmare last night, and this morning, after I woke up, I free-associated the way Dr. Strauss told me to do when I remember my dreams. Think about the dream and just let my mind wander until other thoughts come up in my mind. I keep on doing that until my mind goes blank. Dr. Strauss says that it means I've reached a point where my subconscious is trying to block my conscious from remembering. It's a wall between the present and the past. Sometimes the wall stays up and sometimes it breaks down and I can remember what's behind it.
Like this morning.
The dream was about Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports. In the dream I sit down to write but I can't write or read any more. It's all gone. I get frightened so I ask Gimpy at the bakery to write for me. But when Miss Kinnian reads the report she gets angry and tears the pages up because they've got dirty words in them.
When I get home Prof. Nemur and Dr. Strauss are waiting for me and they give me a beating for writing dirty things in the progress report. When they leave me I pick up the torn pages but they turn into lace valentines with blood all over them.
It was a horrible dream but I got out of bed and wrote it all down and then I started to free associate.
Bakery ... baking ... the urn ... someone kicking me ... fall down ... bloody all over ... writing ... big pencil on a red valentine ... a little gold heart ... a locket ... a chain ... all covered with blood ... and he's laughing at me...
The chain is from a locket ... spinning around ... flashing the sunlight into my eyes. And I like to watch it spin ... watch the chain ... all bunched up and twisting and spinning ... and a little girl is watching me.
Her name is Miss Kin—I mean Harriet. "
Harriet ... Harriet ... we all love Harriet."
And then there's nothing. It's blank again.
Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports over my shoulder.
Then we're at the Adult Center for the Retarded, and she's reading over my shoulder as I write my composishuns compositions.
School changes into P.S. 13 and I'm eleven years old and Miss Kinnian is eleven years old too, but now she's not Miss Kinnian. She's a little girl with dimples and long curls and her name is Harriet. We all love Harriet. It's Valentines Day.
I remember...
I remember what happened at P.S. 13 and why they had to change my school and send me to P.S. 222. It was because of Harriet.
I see Charlie—eleven years old. He has a little gold-color locket he once found in the street. There's no chain, but he has it on a string, and he likes to twirl the locket so that it bunches up the string, and then watch it unwind, spinning around with the sun flicking into his eyes.
Sometimes when the kids play catch they let him play in the middle and he tries to get the ball before one of them catches it. He likes to be in the middle—even if he never catches the ball—and once when Hymie