Kinsler: And it's sure embarrassing when a student asks something easy
During a one-term job teaching electronics at Ohio University, I kept running into a depressing novel called “Flowers for Algernon,” written by one of the professors. It’s the story of a mentally-disabled guy who underwent experimental surgery that temporarily bestowed great intelligence upon him. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t go well.)
Well, I now know how Charlie felt on the downslope, for at the moment my wits seem to have become forever scrambled by opioid pain killers. I was at one time considered quite a bright and clever fellow, but lately, the forecast has turned cloudy.
In the careless high summer of my golden years, I fixed things, wrote for this fine newspaper, and tutored physics and electrical engineering for a high-class online tutoring service. What happened is that I needed surgery for my back and my hand tremor, and recovery from these involved lots of pain-killing. Whether I am personally culpable in said killing remains to be seen, for currently, I cannot seem to think my way through an elementary physics problem from Section 1-1.
I have a good many physics texts; total weight perhaps 43 tons, and I’ve finally decided to simply work through and solve every problem that lurks in one of them.
And that’s when I thought I was gonna die. First off, my handwriting, never very legible had deteriorated to the point where neither I nor a team of Navajo code talkers could decipher anything. It turns out that we’d collected lots of fancy insurance company ball-point pens, which feel executive-like in your hand but aren’t useful for Equation 2-4.
But most of the problem was plain old fear—fear that my mind had irreversibly atrophied. And you can take it from M Kinsler and Natalie, his court-appointed minder (well, I never did read that marriage license) that nothing can pluck the feeble supports from under your ego like the prospect of permanent, ever-lasting dumbness.
“Right now, you might want to take a nap,” she suggested. “In a few days it’ll all come back to you, just like it did after your other surgeries.” Perhaps she’s right (a helpful policy for any marriage,) for I’ve progressed to Chapter 2.
Mark Kinsler, kinsler33@gmail.com, lives under guard in our house in Lancaster, which is as good a rehab facility as any. The two cats seem to think my mind has cleared up, but Natalie remains suspicious.
This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Kinsler: And it's sure embarrassing when a student asks something easy
