Every day some researcher sets a rhesus monkey in front of a row of buttons. One of these buttons will drop a nugget of food out a shoot and the monkey will munch happily. The other two usually have electrodes attached. Every day I enter the cafeteria here on campus, I test whether or not I am smarter than a rhesus monkey by pointing to the Hangul characters I believe equal vegetables and rice. Somedays I’m right on, and days like today I get a bowl of super-sonic-diarrhea-pork which is like attaching an electrode directly to my small intestine.
These days mine is a world of pointing and frowning. I find stores where I can pick things up and bring them to the counter, and I avoid routes that require me to remember street signs. I demonstrate everything with my fingers: how many, how much, when to go and when to stop. Here I am a pasty and talentless mime bumbling through the metroscape. I wonder if Koko the gorilla has this problem.
All of this might be fine if I didn’t find it necessary to flail my hands and arms about while speaking in English. To the non-native speaker it I must appear to be in a state of constant seizure with my spastic limbs and eyes rolling into the back of my head. Mixed with my voice coming in and out of a falsetto and the occasional clicks and beeps, I can’t be too far off from the medieval madmen accused of St Vitus Dance. This means it’s only a matter of time before I’m staying in a room the state springs, complete with three meals trays a say slid into the safety slot of a padded cell.
At least the monkey gets to choose when he gets the food pellet.
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