The first Book I have ever Read

I don’t remember much about the first book I have ever read. I was 9 years old, I think. Fourth grade. My mother handed me this thin-ish old book, dusty and musty from storage. It was Flowers for Algernon.

I'm not sure if it was hers or my dad's-- though later I would find out that it was my father who was into reading novels and collecting books. This book, however was nowhere near the genre of literature he was so fond of reading. His shelves were filled with war and spy stories, memoirs of people he admired, medical thrillers, legal thrillers, and Indiana Jones-like action novels. Flowers for Algernon was a heartwarming, albeit soppy story about a mentally handicapped man, his unusual journey into higher intelligence, and a mouse named Algernon. On the other hand, I never saw my mom with a book. Books are simply not her thing. Until now, I don't know what her thing is.

Flowers for Algernon is about Charlie Gordon and this mouse, Algernon. Charlie is a mentally challenged man who was chosen to undergo an operation to make him smart. He and Algernon met in the laboratory where they had to “compete” going through a similar maze. I want to read this book again, as an adult this time, because I remember agreeing to read this book only because I found the first pages funny. They weren’t really funny in context but it was written in Charlie Gordon’s language which was rough, childlike and rife with misspellings. In retrospect I realize that this was a sad story, with a lot of complex emotions and personal conflicts– that I did not appreciate as a child. I wasn’t really interested in what was going to happen to Charlie, who was the main character, but was just waiting for the mouse to make an appearance.

So I ask myself: before I re-read this book– if I were to be given the chance to have my intelligence enhanced, would I take it? What if there is an operation that will give my brain the ability to understand complex mathematical concepts? Hell, I can’t even handle basic Algebra. Hahaha. What if?