Flowers For Algernon.

If there's any regrets I have about "Dropping out" with my family and leacing the money economy, it's the new FOX2P drugs coming out.

Within 4 miles of my house, there is a place called the Judevine center for Autism. There they provide training, therapy and other services for autistic people, primarily children but also adults. My son is Autistic, 16 now. We've always wanted to do something with the Judevine center, but the basic course costs something like 2000 dollars. There hasn't been and state funding available to assist us, we've been on that waiting list for over a decade now and the government just doesn't have any money to spare. And now, this last year they've started offering the new FOX2P Cognitive enhancers.

These little pills treat the symptoms of autism by temporarily mimicing the function of the FOX2P gene, increasing the patients ability to form effective communication. Most autistic people are very cognizant individuals who simply have great difficulty communicating with other people. It's amazing what the FOX2P drugs can do, I know, because I've seen it.

Before they made them publically available, The Judevine center was part of the test runs of the product. We volunteered, but were rejected because they wanted all canidates to have gone through their basic sessions, and we couldn't pay for them. But I did keep coming back to watch the trials, and I saw low funcioning autistics improve drastically, and I saw High functioning Autistics essentially cured.

I need to come clean a little here: I'm not a good person. Rather, there are times when I'm willing to do something bad if I think it's worth it. I stole some of those little Miracle Pills. About a weeks worth.

It's hard for me to think about that week. It was wonderful. I've never been able to communicate with my son like I was that week. And He'd never been happier. To see him read, out loud, to his younger sister... for once it seemed he was the older sibling and not her. Being able to trust him with the sharp tools. Letting him walk to the farmers market alone and have him come back.

OK, I'm crying now.

I'm crying because it was only for a week. We can't afford the drugs. A week's supply costs 250 dollars. That's 13,000 a year, which I couldn't afford even if I went back to work full time. Maybe if I hadn't ever dropped out, had stuck with my stupid architecture career instead of starting this crazy homestead project, I'd be high enough on the corporate ladder now I could afford that. There's a million reasons I couldn't do that, but they all seem to pale in comparison to the idea that if I did, I could have the boy I knew that week all the time. I can't steal them all the time. And it's not a lasting cure. Once you stop taking them, all the effects wear off.

Well, not everything. There are things Cam was always capable of doing, but we just couldn't explain them to him. And he remembers that week. He knows what it's like to be able to communicate now, and he tries harder. Sometimes it hurts him, I think, to try so hard and fail, but he tries. And he tells me it's OK.

I have to go hug someone.