Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel Read Online Free PDF

everyone’s early expectations for my future. I’d scored very high on an IQ test administered in elementary school, and my father swore from that day forward that I was a genius, but subsequent tests I took online were not as promising, and I gave up on my mind and its potential and just lived for the thrills of adrenaline rushes and good parties. In the battle between mind and body, my physicality had won. In my early twenties, I’d decided I would run my father’s furniture stores by day and party every night. I thought I would go on that way forever.

Chapter Three
Subtraction
    A T AGE THIRTY-ONE , I guess I was pretty aimless, but it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. I was having fun, bouncing from one night out to the next. I rarely had a serious thought in my head. My only goal was to live with joyful abandon 24-7. And in all honesty, I was really happy.
    When my friend Angela called from a karaoke bar on a September night in 2002, I was especially excited to join the party. I knew at least twenty karaoke selections by heart; I didn’t even have to look at the subtitles on the prompter. My top two songs were “Close My Eyes Forever,” by Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford, and “Takin’ Care of Business,” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive. I was a good singer, and I loved the reaction I got from the crowds when I took the stage. Sometimes they really, truly cheered for me. I tried not to let this go to my head when I performed, but I used to squint and imagine I was in a stadium filled with a hundred thousand people. So I was looking forward to another karaoke night with friends.
    But first I had to get ready.
    I put my Charlie Daniels Band CD in my stereo and began bopping around the house playing air fiddle to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” I always did a warm-up before going out, to get the adrenaline flowing. I knew the words to this song by heart, but that night I came up with new lyrics based on the line in the original hit song where the hero, Johnny, tells the devil, “Come on back if you ever want to try again.” I guess I was always one to tempt fate. It was a thrilling scenario: a rematch with the Prince of Darkness.
    I sang:
     
It had been several years since these two had first met
And unbeknownst to Johnny, the contest wasn’t over yet . . .
     
When the devil spotted Johnny basking in the sun
Enjoying all that wealth from the golden fiddle he had won . . .
     
The devil said to Johnny, “This time I’ll let you start the show,”
But it took Johnny twenty minutes to find his fiddle and his bow.
     
    What if the devil found Johnny years later, bloated and lazy after having won the golden fiddle in the first competition, and challenged him to try again? What if Johnny was foolish enough to gamble his soul one more time? Still dancing, I grabbed a pen and paper, and in the lyrics I found flowing out of me, the devil jumped up on the trunk of Johnny’s new Mercedes-Benz and proceeded to annihilate him in competitive fiddling. Johnny lost the challenge, and his children looked on in horror as he fell to the ground and the devil collected his soul in a leather pouch. This was a really good sequel, I decided.
    I sang my new version of the song in the shower, and then I began the business of fixing my hair. My hair was long—okay, it was an actual mullet—and I needed a special brush and plenty of mousse and gel and just the right flick of the wrist while blow-drying to get my bangs the way I wanted them. It was brisk weather outside so I piled on the hairspray and dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and my black leather jacket.
    It was Friday the thirteenth, but I wasn’t superstitious. The bar was in a sketchy part of town, but I’d never had a problem before and I wasn’t one to pass up a night out. I made my way upstairs to the second floor of the Mexican restaurant where the bar was located, turned left, and found Angela and her date sitting near the stage. The lighting was dim