//------------------------------//
// We all love Harry 
// Story: Into the Mind of a Simpler Mare 
// by harrytheneat 
//------------------------------//

It's really just a coincidence that the name of a boy in this chapter became Harry (see username). You see, in the original, his name was Harriet and he was a girl. It doesn't seem necessary to make this an ultra lezbo Derpy/some(pony) else thing. So I didn't name a pony after myself. I just named it after its name. Now here's the next chapter! 


Into the Mind of a Simpler Mare
Story based on Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Edit by me
We all love Harry


April 15 - I'm reading a lot these days and almost everything is staying in my mind. Besides history and geography and arithmetic, Dr. Whooves says I should start learning foreign languages.
Twilight gave me some more tapes to play while I sleep. I still don't know how the conscious and unconscious mind works, but Twilight says not to worry yet. She made me promise that when I start learning college subjects in a couple of weeks I won't read any books on psychology-that is, until she gives me permission. She says it will confuse me and make me think about psychological theories instead of about my own ideas and feelings. But it's okay to read novels.
This week I read The Great Gatsby, An Equestrian Tragedy, and Look Homeward, Angel. I never knew about mares and stallions doing things like that.



April 16 - I feel a lot better today, but I'm still angry that all the time everypony was laughing and making fun of me. When I become intelligent the way Twilight says, with much more than twice my IQ of 70, then maybe everypony will like me and be my friend.
I'm not sure what IQ is anyway. Twilight said it was something that measured how intelligent you were-like how the scale at Applejack’s market booth weighs in pounds.
But Spike had a big argument with her and said an IQ didn't weigh intelligence at all. He said an IQ showed how much intelligence you could get, like the numbers on the outside of a measuring cup. You still had to fill the cup up with stuff.
When I asked Fluttershy, who tests and works with Angel, I think she said that some people would say both of them were wrong and according to the things she's been reading up on, the IQ measures a lot of different things including some of the things you learned already and it really isn't a good measure of intelligence at all.
So I still don't know what IQ is, and everypony says it's something different. Mine is about a hundred now, and it's going to be over a hundred and fifty soon, but they'll still have to fill me up with the stuff. I didn't want to say anything, but I don't see how if they don't know what it is, or where it is - how they know how much of it you've got. 
Twilight says I have to take a Rorschach Test the day after tomorrow. I wonder what that is.



April 17 - I had a nightmare last night, and this morning, after I woke up, I free associated the way Twilight told me to do when I remember my dreams. They said free association is like thinking for yourself but I still don’t get it.
I thought about the dream and just let my mind wander until other thoughts come up in my mind. I keep on doing that until my mind goes blank. Twilight says that it means I've reached a point where my subconscious is trying to block my conscious from remembering. It's a wall between the present and the past. Sometimes the wall stays up and sometimes it breaks down and I can remember what's behind it.
Like this morning. The dream was about Dr. Whooves reading my progress reports. In the dream I sit down to write but I can't write or read any more. It's all gone. I get frightened so I ask Grumpy to write for me. But when Dr. Whooves reads the report he gets angry and tears the pages up because they've got bad words in them. When I get home Twilight and Spike are waiting for me and they give me a beating for writing dirty things in the progress report. When they leave me I pick up the torn pages but they turn into a lace Hearts and Hooves Day card with blood all over it. It was a horrible dream but I got out of bed and wrote it all down and then I started to free associate.
Post office... delivering... the... uh... somepony kicking me... fall down... bloody all over... writing... big pencil on a red card... a little gold heart... a locket... a chain... all covered with blood... and he's laughing at me... The chain is from a locket... spinning around ..flashing the sunlight into my eyes. And I like to watch it spin... watch the chain... all bunched up and twisting and spinning... and a little boy is watching me. His name is Dr. Who- I mean Harry. "Harry... Harry... we all love Harry."
And then there's nothing. It's blank again. Dr. Whooves reading my progress reports over my shoulder. Then we're at the Home for the Retarded, and he's reading over my shoulder as I write my compositions. School changes into P.S. 13 and I'm eleven years old and Dr. Whooves is eleven years old too, but now he's not Dr. Whooves. He's a little boy with blue eyes and scraggled hair and his name is Harry. We all love Harry.
It's Hearts and Hooves Day. I remember... I remember what happened at P.S. 13 and why they had to change my school and send me to P.S. 222. It was because of Harry. I see Ditzy-eleven years old. She has a little gold color locket she once found in the street. There's no chain, but she has it on a string, and she likes to twirl the locket so that it bunches up the string, and then watch it unwind, spinning around with the sun flicking into her eyes.
Sometimes when the other fillies play catch they let her play in the middle and she tries to get the ball before one of them catches it. She likes to be in the middle - even if she never catches the ball - and once when Rhyme Note dropped the ball by mistake and she picked it up they wouldn't let her throw it but she had to go in the middle again. When Harry passes by, the girls stop playing and look at him. All the girls love Harry.
Derpy doesn't know why they make such a fuss about a boy and why they always want to talk to him (she'd rather play ball or kick-the-can, or play in mud than talk to a boy) but all the girls are in love with Harry so she is in love with him too. He never teases her like the other fillies, and she does tricks for him.
She walks on the desks when the teacher isn't there. She throws erasers out the window, scribbles all over the blackboard and walls. And Harry always screeches and laughs, "Oh, lookit Derpy. Isn't she funny? Oh, isn't she silly?" It's Hearts and Hooves Day, and the girls are talking about cards they're going to give Harry, so Ditzy says, "I'm gonna give Harry a card too." They laugh and Platinum Spoon says, "Where are you going to get a valentine?" "I'm gonna get him a pretty one. You'll see." But Ditzy doesn't have any money for a card, so she decides to give Harry her locket that is heart-shaped like the jewelry in the store windows.
That night she takes tissue paper from her mother's drawer, and it takes a long time to wrap and tie it with a piece of red ribbon. Then Ditzy takes it to Rhyme Note the next day during lunch period in school and asks Rhyme to write on the paper for her.
She tells Rhyme to write: "Dear Harry, I think you are the most handsomest boy in all Equestria. I like you very much and I love you. I want you to be my very special somepony. Your friend, Ditzy Hooves." Rhyme prints very carefully in large letters on the paper, laughing all the time, and she tells Ditzy, "Boy, this will knock his eyes out. Wait'll he sees this."
Ditzy is scared, but she wants to give Harry that locket, so she follows him home from school and waits until he goes into his house. Then Ditzy sneaks up to the house and hangs the package on the doorknob. She rings the bell twice and runs across the street to hide behind the tree. When Harry comes down he looks around to see who rang the bell. Then he sees the package. He takes it and goes upstairs.
Ditzy goes home from school and she gets a spanking because she took the tissue paper and ribbon out of her mother's drawer without telling her. But she doesn't care. Tomorrow Harry will wear the locket and tell all the girls Ditzy gave it to him. Then they'll see. The next day Ditzy runs all the way to school, but it's too early. Harry isn't there yet, and she's excited. But when Harry comes in he doesn't even look at her. He isn't wearing the locket. And he looks sore.
Ditzy does all kinds of things when Mrs. Happily isn't watching: She makes funny faces. She laughs out loud. She stands up on her seat and scrunches her nose. She even throws a piece of chalk at Bon Bon. But Harry doesn't look at her even once.
Maybe he forgot. Maybe he'll wear it tomorrow. She passes by him in the hallway, but when she comes over to ask him he pushes past her without saying a word.
Down in the schoolyard his two big brothers are waiting for Ditzy. Gus pushes her. "You little bitch, did you write this dirty note to my brother?" Ditzy says she didn't write any dirty notes. "I just gave him a Hearts and Hooves card." Dollarback who was on the football team before he graduated from high school grabs Ditzy's mane and pulls out some hair. "You keep away from my brother, you degenerate. You don't belong in this school anyway." He pushes Ditzy over to Gus who catches her by the throat. Ditzy is scared and starts to cry. Then they start to hurt her. Dollarback punches her in the nose, and Gus knocks her on the ground and kicks her in the side and then both of them kick her, one and then the other.
Some of the other kids in the yard, Ditzy's friends -- come running screaming and stomping their hooves: "Fight! Fight! They're beating up Derpy" Her mane is torn and her nose is bleeding and one of her teeth is broken, and after Gus and Dollarback go away she sits on the sidewalk and cries. The blood tastes sour. The other kids just laugh and shout: "Derpy got a beating! Derpy got a beating!" 
And then Daisy Bloom, one of the caretakers from the school, comes and chases them away. She takes Ditzy into the girls' room and tells her to wash off the blood and dirt from her face and hands before she goes back home... I guess I was pretty dumb because I believed what people told me. I shouldn't have trusted Rhyme or anypony.
I never remembered any of this before today, but it came back to me after I thought about the dream. It has something to do with the feeling about Dr. Whooves reading my progress reports. Anyway, I'm glad now I don't have to ask anypony to write things for me. Now I can do it for myself. But I just realized something. Harry never gave me back my locket.



April 18 - I found out what a Rorschach is. It's the test with the inkblots, the one I took before the operation. As soon as I saw what it was, I got frightened. I knew Spike was going to ask me to find the pictures, and I knew I wouldn't be able to. I was thinking, if only there was some way of knowing what kind of pictures were hidden there. Maybe there weren't any pictures at all. Maybe it was just a trick to see if I was dumb enough to look for something that wasn't there. Just thinking about it made me sore at him.
"Ok, Ditzy," he said, "you've seen these cards before, remember?" "Of course, I remember." The way I said it, he knew I was angry, and he looked up at me surprised.
"Anything wrong, Ditzy?" "No, nothing's wrong. Those inkblots just upset me." He smiled and shook his head. "It’s fine Ditzy. This is just one of the standard personality tests. Now I want you to look at this card. What might this be? What do you see on this card? People see all sorts of things in these inkblots. Tell me what it might be for you-what it makes you think of." 
I was shocked. I stared at the card and then at him. That wasn't what I had expected him to say at all. "You mean there are no pictures hidden in those inkblots?" Spike looked confused and took off his unnecessary glasses. "What?" "Pictures! Hidden in the inkblots! Last time you told me that everypony could see them and you wanted me to find them too." "Ditzy, I didn’t say that." "What do you mean?" I shouted at him.
Being so afraid of the inkblots had made me angry at myself and at Spike too. "That's what you said to me. Just because you're smart enough to go to have a fake psychology degree doesn't mean you have to make fun of me. I'm sick and tired of everypony laughing at me." I don't recall ever being so angry before.
I don't think I was angry at Spike himself, but suddenly everything exploded. I tossed the Rorschach cards on the table and walked out. Twilight was passing by, and when I rushed past her without saying hello she knew something was wrong. She and Spike caught up with me as I was about to leave the library. "Ditzy," said Twilight, grabbing my wing. "Wait a minute. What is this all about?"
I shook free and looked at Spike. "I'm sick and tired of everypony making fun of me. That's all. Maybe before I didn't know any better, but now I do, and I don't like it." "Nopony's making fun of you here, Ditzy," said Twilight. "What about the inkblots? Last time Spike told me there were pictures in the ink-that everypony could see, and I-"
"Look, Ditzy, would you like to hear the exact words Spike said to you, and your answers as well? We have a tape-recording of that testing session. We can replay it and let you hear exactly what was said. "I went back with them to the library with mixed feelings. I was sure they had made fun of me and tricked me when I was too ignorant to know better.
My anger was an exciting feeling, and I didn't give it up easily. I was ready to fight. As Twilight went to the files to get the tape, Spike explained: "I’m pretty sure I used the exact words I used today” and recited a poster I saw on a bookshelf. “It's a requirement of these tests that the procedure be the same each time it's administered."
"I'll believe that when I hear it" A look passed between them. I felt the blood rush to my face again. They were laughing at me. But then I realized what I had just said, and hearing myself I understood the reason for the look.
They weren't laughing. They knew what was happening to me. I had reached a new level, and anger and suspicion were my first reactions to the world around me. Spike's voice boomed over the tape recorder: 
"Now I want you to look at this card, Ditzy. What might this be? What do you see on this card? Ponies see all kinds of things in these inkblots. Tell me what it makes you think of..." The same words, almost the same tone of voice he had used minutes ago in the lab.
And then I heard my answers-childish, impossible things. And I dropped limply into the chair beside Twilight’s desk. "Was that really me?"
I went back to the lab with Spike, and we went on with the Rorschach. We went through the cards slowly. This time my responses were different. I "saw" things in the inkblots. A pair of bats tugging at each other. Two men fencing with swords. I imagined all sorts of things. But even so, I found myself not trusting Spike completely any more. I kept turning the cards around, checking the backs to see if there was anything there I was supposed to catch. 
I peeked, while he was making his notes. But it was all in code that looked like this:

WF + A DdF-Ad orig. WF-A SF + obj

The test still doesn't make sense. It seems to me that anypony could make up lies about things they didn't really see. How could they know I wasn't making fools of them by saying things I didn't really imagine? Maybe I'll understand it when Twilight lets me read up on psychology.
It's getting harder for me to write down all my thoughts and feelings because I know that people are reading them. Maybe it would be better if I could keep some of these reports private for a while. I'm going to ask Twilight. Why should it suddenly start to bother me?