From the Editor’s Desk: Stupider (Premium)

We were hanging out with a friend who owns a local bar, and it was a slow night, so it was a good time to catch up. I half-jokingly suggested that we get something to eat that was different from our usual--a surprisingly good sourdough pizza--when the friend noted that I hadn't even wanted to try that the first time I visited because there were so many carbs. This was four years ago, so I was surprised he remembered that, and then he rifled off a set of memories from that time, surprising me even more.

"You're having a real Flowers for Algernon moment," I joked, referring to the book and subsequent movie, which was called Charlie for some reason. He had no idea what I was talking about. He had never heard of either.

This paused the conversation so I could explain it. This friend is from Mexico, and has lived there his entire life, but he's one of several people we know in Mexico City who isn't just stunningly bilingual but also has an incredible understanding of English-language music, books, movies, TV shows, and other cultural information. He's so good at this, I sometimes forget I didn't grow up with him. Which doesn't make any sense at all, given that he's 20 years younger than me. But that's the illusion when you meet someone like this.

Most of the people we know here are bilingual, of course. But even those who express themselves perfectly in English sometimes falter. We were chatting with a bartender friend at a different place one night when she told us she had just moved into a new apartment. My wife, lulled into a false sense of common worldview, just as I had been, then asked, "What's the new apartment like?"

"Like?" she responded, confused.

And then after a pause, she answered, "it's like an apartment."

Hilarious. But back to Flowers for Algernon. After I had explained the story to him, he assumed I meant that he was like Charlie, the protagonist in the book, on the downward curve of his experience, when his surgery-induced genius starts to fade. In other words, he thought it was an elaborate joke, the type of insult that male friends seem to share effortlessly. And, yes, I can tell you from experience that that type of thing is cross-cultural.

But it isn't what I meant. "No, no, you're on the upside of the curve, you're nailing it," I told him. I couldn't believe his sudden recall, and the details he came up with. Then he joked about not drinking too much and thus not having a hangover, and that must be it. And the conversation moved on.

But having watched him and then thinking of Flowers for Algernon, I couldn't get it out of my mind. The story is tragic for all the obvious reasons, and reading it as a child, I could viscerally understand how terrifying it would be to not just lose your facilities, but know that it was happening and being helpless to prevent it. This is a real-life tragedy that plays out around the world every day, of course, as people start succumbing to Alzheimer's and other diseases...