Around second grade, something odd happened to me: I discovered I had a photographic memory. For a while I was a trick pony who could read an entire book page once then recite it verbatim. I couldn't understand why other people couldn't do this.

Then, a year or so later...it stopped. Not all at once; it became gradually harder and harder to do it, and one day I realized the ability was gone.

As all of this was happening, I happened to read Flowers for Algernon. It gripped me, and for many years I was afraid that the same thing was happening/would happen to me...I'd gradually become 'dumber and dumber' until I couldn't do anything. It scared the hell out of me.

As an adult in my 50s, I sometimes have random episodes of 'photographic' memory--I'll recall a page from book I read years ago, or an entire conversation from high school. I can't control it--it's entirely random. Seeing this book again brings back a mild echo of that anxiety I had about it. To this day, I just can't read it again.