Work Text:
For the first year or so of everyone’s life, we can’t speak. We communicate with bilabials, alveolars, plosives. It’s difficult for people to realize that babies process much more than they think, especially in regard to language. There is an unimaginable spike of knowledge when babies learn their language. Not only do studies show that babies hear their mothers’ vowels, but after birth they seek out her language too. Language is stimulating for babies.
Obviously, it isn’t as stimulating for Spencer’s History of Language professor. Especially when it’s Spencer doing the talking.
That is precisely how he ended up sitting on an uncomfortable wooden chair at 1 p.m. on a Thursday. He turns to the girl sitting next to him, “Did you know that neuroscientists have found a gene that possibly helps us produce and understand speech?” The girl blinked at him.
He took that as his cue to continue, “The human version of a Foxp2 gene makes it easier to transform new experiences into routine procedures. When they engineered mice to express this gene, the mice learned to run a maze quicker than regular mice.”
“What does this have to do with learning language?” Oh! She was listening!
“The transforming experiences into routine procedures part is the key! Hearing the word ‘glass’ when you are shown a glass of water will make you associate the word with the object. Of course, there are many biological functions that possibly contribute to us using and producing language. And! Did you know you condition your brain with your native language so much that your brain stops being able to comprehend and produce sounds from other languages?”
“Oh really? I didn’t know that.”
“Think of it as a garden. You’re in a building and all the windows overlook certain parts of the garden. You’ve had one window your whole life. When learning another language, you need to carve out a new window into a different part of the garden and recognize new flowers that look like your flowers but slightly different.”
“Miss García,” the Dean – Dr. Howard, a slim old man with greying hair and a generous splatter of sunspots on his face – stated as he walked out of his office, “We are going to need you to stop hacking into university databases. Especially ones you already have full access to.” The girl looked vaguely ashamed.
“Yes, sir.”
“And Mr. Reid,” he refrained from correcting him to Dr. Reid since correcting people is sort of what got him here, “please refrain from correcting professors after every sentence, they only have a limited amount of time to teach,” he continued, “Neither of you will face consequences, because you haven’t really caused any harm, but you are going to need to stop.” With a sigh, the Dean retreated back to his office.
“Did you know that the origin of the surname García goes back to the Basques? It may have originally been ‘Gaztea’ but that was later Castilianized in the medieval Kingdom of Castile and became ‘García’. There’s not really a clear conclusion on what it might mean, but people generally agree that it could mean either young or bear or both.”
“You know so much about my surname, how about you tell me something about yours?”
“Reid. Scottish origin. It means red.”
“Kind of boring after the whole García spiel, isn’t it?” She frowned, “Maybe your first name has a more interesting meaning?”
“...Spencer. It comes from dispenser.” Her face twitched, “You can laugh it’s fine.”
She did, “My first name is Penelope, what about the origin of that?”
“Greek in origin, the meaning is, again, uncertain. It either comes from the word penelops, which means duck, or it could come from the combination of the words pene, meaning web, and either ops – meaning eye – or lepo – meaning unravelled.
“Sorry, red dispenser, I guess you’re in this alone.” She said in between giggles, “Are you studying linguistics or something?”
“No, no, I study mechanical engineering and have a doctorate in mathematics.”
“A doctorate?!” Her eyes bulged, “Do you have a chronic case of baby face?”
“I’m actually fifteen.”
“A doctorate at fifteen, now that’s impressive. Did you come here when you were eight?”
“Twelve, actually. They wouldn’t let me graduate sooner.”
“And you did this with no coffee, no alcohol, no nicotine, no anything?”
“Actually, coffee isn’t as detrimental to development as people might think. The recommended daily limit for adolescents is 100 mgs which is roughly one cup of coffee. Of course, too much coffee can cause problems, such as anxiety, increased heartrate, et cetera, but the long-term effect on children is not fully known because testing that would be, you know, unethical.” He says, “Actually, in adults, studies show that coffee can decrease risk of stroke, cancer, certain heart conditions, Type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease!”
Zebra finches raised in complete isolation do not sing the same song they would if they were raised normally. He sometimes feels like a zebra finch raised in isolation. The last common ancestor of birds and mammals is estimated to have lived more than three hundred years ago, but he feels that the last common ancestor was born on October 12th, 1981.
But he wasn’t raised in isolation. He was always around people, he went to a normal public school in Las Vegas, he went to a university. It may not have been a regular experience, but he was socialized. He didn’t understand what was wrong with him. It seemed to him as if everyone in the world had a manual on how to behave, what to do, where to look. It seemed to him that everyone innately had what he lacked.
Well, maybe not everyone.
birds of a feather
Idiom ⋅ often disapproving
people who are similar in character.
Exhibit A. Penelope sways from side to side when she’s waiting for the bus. Spencer sways from side to side when he’s waiting for class to begin. Penelope flaps her hands when she’s nervous about the future. Spencer flaps his hands when he’s trying to figure something out. Penelope twirls her hair when she’s deep in thought. Spencer twirls his pen twice before writing something down. Penelope moves her rings from finger to finger. Spencer tugs on his fingers. Penelope keeps intense eye contact when she speaks to him. Spencer avoids her eyes when he speaks to her. Penelope destroys her nail beds. Spencer paces and spins.
Exhibit B. He’s currently sitting in Penelope’s dorm room, the blinds are down, the lights are turned off, and he watches as she wordlessly rocks. He doesn’t know what to do. He experienced this before. It’s like looking in the mirror.
“Are you okay with me touching you?” he asks, knowing he wouldn’t want to be. But she’s not him, she nods. He awkwardly pats her back, his hand coming to a rest on her shoulder. She grips his hand in hers. And they sit.
In the year 1888 Vincent van Gogh painted The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, which depicts a café in Arles, France in mid-September. The scene he finds himself in Pasadena, California is quite similar to the yellows and blues of van Gogh’s vision. They sit inside a café, the bulbs shine a soft yellow, making the evening outside look blue. Penelope is consulting her notes on algorithms while sipping on a mocha, he’s consulting his notes on thermodynamics while sipping on white chocolate, “Did you know the name of caffè mocha is derived from the city of Mokha in Yemen? It was one of the early centers for coffee trade from the 16th to the 19th century.”
“Huh. I wouldn’t have guessed Yemen to be on that list. Interesting.”
“Probably because the coffee didn’t grow there, it was transported there from Ethiopia.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Caffeine is the most widely consumed central nervous system stimulant-“
“You’re bored, aren’t you?”
“It also has several different names, but I think I like methyltheobromine the best.”
“Of course you do. Are you sure you studied mathematics and mechanical engineering and not chemistry?”
He shrugs, “Might be next on my list of PhDs to get.”
“Rub it in our faces, why don’t you, red dispenser.” He rolls his eyes at her and grins.
When they finish their work, they gather all their things and head to the dorms.
Many people don’t realize that van Gogh’s paintings were full of somber and earthy tones before he added brighter colors to his palette in Paris. It reminds him of his late-night walks to the dorms in the fall semester (De Pastorie te Nuenen), of the house his mother lives in (De Aardappeleters), of late nights at his dark dorm spent studying (Stilleven met Bijbel).
The bright blues and yellows remind him of his and Penelope’s evening study sessions, the blues of the changing sky, the yellows of Penelope’s box dyed hair.
In August of 1885 Vincent van Gogh wrote ‘I am always doing what I can’t do yet in order to learn how to do it.’
Food never really meant much in his household. It was a means of sustaining oneself, of staying alive. But to Penelope, what she eats, with whom she eats it, how she eats it, it’s all significant. It’s all a means of communication.
He’s sitting on the linoleum floors of Penny’s dorm room, having found himself agreeing to a girls’ night she and her roommate, Michelle, invited him to. He doesn’t know if he’s been invited out of pity, if they can feel the dark smog screaming out lonely, undeserving, loveless in every direction. He doesn’t know if they know he can’t stomach the cafeteria food from time to time, not from a lack of trying. But he’s here anyways, eating arroz con pollo and watching Doctor Who under a copious amount of blankets that they all share. He doesn’t know if they know about his mother, or his father, or himself, but their company means everything. He doesn’t want to think about it.
The ancient Greek philosophers differentiated between six different types of love. Agape, eros, philia, storge, philautia, and xenia.
Philia (/ˈfɪliə/; from Ancient Greek φιλία)
- Usually translated as friendship, affection.
- A psychological disorder characterized by an irrational favorable disposition towards something.
He bit his cheek, “Did you know that pink is possibly the oldest color in the world?” Michelle and Penelope turned away from the TV, he didn’t, “A study found bright-pink pigments in rocks that are 1.1 billion years old, thanks to the fossils of cyanobacteria. Those are also the first organisms to have produced oxygen that we know of.”
Penny smiled at him, “I love you, too.”
He drew blood.
Spencer Walter Reid was born on a Monday on the 12th of October 1981 in Las Vegas at 4:46 p.m. to a Diana Jane Reid and William Lee Reid. It was 68 °F, dry and partly cloudy. Monday's child is fair of face. He thinks he should have been born on a Wednesday.
It was 12th of October 1997 on a Sunday, all his homework was done, he had no classes, and he was laying in his dorm on a bed on his birthday because he didn’t want to return home. Nobody even knew it was his birthday today, his sixteenth.
(Probably not even his own mother.) (He felt guilt, guilt, guilt.)
The birthday effect is a statistical phenomenon which appears to link birthdays and suicide rates.
One’s sweet sixteen is supposed to be wonderful, but his felt poignant. For other (normal) people, sixteen comes with new exciting responsibilities, you learn how to drive, you get a job, you celebrate your induction into being an almost-adult. His induction had passed when he was ten years old and his father left him to take care of his schizophrenic mother alone, trying to put food on the table.
There was a knock on the door.
Penelope was standing there, looking akin to a kicked puppy, and asked him to come play board games at her dorm room. He found no reason to refuse.
Psychologists in the past have thought that being a genius meant being able to reach a high enough number on the intelligence quotient. What they didn’t consider is destroying other people at Betting on Horses.
After a streak of bad luck in his first few rounds – he spent the whole time on either the parking lot squares or getting fined for doping his non-existent horses – he received a birthday donation from the finance pile which (according to Penny) switched his luck.
He bought out not only the brown stable, but the dark green stable as well (as well as a horse called Genius, because come on), he bought as many trainers as he could (he and Penny had a 50/50 split), and in the end Penny got annihilated by him, not even the best horse in the game, Napoli, could help her.
“A birthday miracle,” he said with a grin.
At the end of the evening, Penny went to the kitchen with the promise of bringing water and came back with a candle adorned purple cupcake, “Happy birthday, Penny.” she said.
“You knew?” he whispered.
“I looked into your university files. Illegally.” She shrugged, “Sorry.”
“Penny, the Dean-“
“I don’t care for the Dean,” she rolled her eyes, “Now blow out the candles! And don’t forget to make a wish!”
“In ancient Greece, to honor Artemis, goddess of the hunt, they baked round cakes and put candles on them to represent the moon. When the candles were blown out, the smoke was said to carry their wishes up to the Gods.”
“They’ve gotta make your birthday wish come true then.”
“I don’t think my wish is-“
“Nuh-uh, blow them out and make a wish!” He obliged.
She materialized a Star Wars Special Edition VHS (from Blockbuster, complete with a sticker), “Was this your wish?!”
It was not, he wished for his mom to get better, “Yes! How did you know?!” And so, it goes.
His presence seems to breed a special kind of hatred in people, he remembers his father’s false promises (broken, broken, broken), his mother’s screams as she doesn’t recognize his face, the vases thrown his way, he remembers the taste of iron on his tongue, the burn of the football field. He remembers the looks. He hopes Penelope is immune to his rot, to the black mold growing in his belly.
Dearest mother, you and I are made of the same bitter betrayal.
Dearest father, revenge is all I can think about sometimes.
Brian De Palma’s 1976 film Carrie based on Stephen King’s story of the same name is a story akin to his mold, the horror of not fitting in, of daring to act different, the brave act of leaving your comfort zone. The burn of anger in your stomach. The bitter love of a parent.
He feels like a forest fire; he feels like the sun.
The entire Halloween he waited for the embers to catch, – Penny and he went trick or treating in the dorms – he was terrified. Of her seeing the burnt-out husk of a house he was/is/will be.
But, in the end, it was fine. His brain played cruel games, laughing at him (never with him), the mold in his stomach never leaving its spot. They played a few tricks (ding, dong, ditch), acquired a few treats (an open packet of M&M’s, and a piece of gum) as well as a Chris; another engineering student that decided to join them. Michelle – who decided to stay in her and Penny’s room watching Halloween – threw a few pieces of popcorn at them when they returned, having been a victim of their trick.
They watched a few slashers, screamed their lungs out, and threw popcorn at the screen.
The fire stayed smothered.