Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
          --Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

I remember how much I hated the feel of silk, especially on my fingers -- it felt the way violins sounded. Now I don't mind it, though I can't say I love it. The combination of resistance on my skin and frictionlessness with respect to itself drove me crazy. Later, comme tout le monde, I hated the sound of nails or broken chalk on blackboards, and I think it was for much the same reason. Something made your body feel either too material or too alienated from matter. There was something about how what perception turned out to bewas a stuttering, shrieking resistance to the smoothness of the material world. The shrieking chalk or nail moves smoothly, the friction almost non-existent (if you think about it); the bow passes rapidly across the string, the silk hardly touches the skin. All the friction comes down to mere sound, or a very slight ambiguous catch on the skin. And so all of what we hate is only facts of perception (the shrieking, the friction), not facts, or certainly not significant facts, about the outside world. These sensations were exactly analogous to my amazed hatred for liver: how could mere sensation, perception that is to say of something at the same time clearly perceptible as not intense or violent in itself -- the chalk on the board --, be so repellent? How could one be so badly fitted to the world one perceived? There's a shock there, either that we don't belong to the world, or that we do, a world that turns out to be serenely and so hideously indifferent to the intense but insignificant sensations it produces in us. I think it's the converse of Ruskin's pathetic fallacy: we knowthe chalk and the string are not shrieking, the silk is not catching or caressing or even touching, the liver is not poisoning. So we are trapped in a realm of unreal affects, knowing the world is not our friend, nor even our fellow-creature.

posted by william 7:00 AM
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I remember carrying my books to school in a briefcase -- one of a series of my parents' old briefcases. (I remember the leather cracking, and its smell.) The cool kids had attache cases instead. And the somehow really cool kids -- or cool in a different way -- had elastic rubber belts or straps that held their books together, and they just carried them under their arms. The straps seemed mysterious to me until finally I got one, and then they turned out to be not mysterious at all, which was slightly disappointing. I don't think you can get them any more -- now everyone uses backpacks, which the kids who had been using straps were the first to take up, in my school at least.

posted by william 7:13 AM
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I remember Peter Rogers always boasting that his father was in Who's Who. I hadn't known what it was before. It seemed like a mildly interesting fact about his father, but nothing more. So I was accurate about that. I met his father once: I think he was president of Rogers Peet; at least Peter claimed that the store was named after him. Peter's twin Ronnie had a Cross pen, and began in me, and in some of my sixth grade classmates, a vogue for Cross pens. My uptown grandfather had a Cross pencil, which I prevailed upon him to give me. But it wasn't quite the same, and finally for some occasion I managed to get a pen. It came with an explanation of 14 Karat gold, which was close to the explanation Goldfinger gives in Goldfinger.I liked its ridges. But I chewed away its black plastic top -- I couldn't help myself -- and it got beat up in other ways as well. I remember being surprised by the humdrum refills of the ink tubes and rollers. They were barely grander than those of Bic pens. I also remember how Bic pens would leak in your pocket, and how easy it was to suck ink out of them absent-mindedly, and how bad the ink tasted, and how much it ruined your shirt when it leaked. I think the ink is better now, the polymers longer and less deliquiescent.

posted by william 7:05 AM
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I remember my mother nursing my baby sister. That was interesting. With her shirt off, her bare shoulders squared to her task, and her aura of sheer competence and esoteric know-how, my mother somehow looked very manly.

posted by william 7:07 AM
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I remember having been stung by a bee. I don't remember the sting, but I remember that it was just over my right eye, I think within its orbit, and I had to wear a huge bandage and the swelling closed up my eye. I hated having the bandage changed because it was so painful, though all I remember is hating to have it changed, not (in the slightest) the pain. That was in Stormville.

I remember also in Stormville my father trying to pull one of my teeth by tying a string from it to the door, which he then slammed. But I couldn't hold back, so that didn't work. I remember also when they would sterilize needles at the stove to get splinters out.

I remember tubular gauze bandages (condom-shaped) formed to fit over your fingers. Or maybe it was just the photo on the box showed them on someone's fingers. They seemed very creepy somehow, as though fingers were just a place waiting to be injured. The photo on the box showed someone with several bandaged fingers -- like three of them -- holding up his hand. The obvious Freudian reason for its creepiness is certainly a part of it, as with my grandfather's joke about pulling off my nose (and the story of the wolf ice-fishing with his tail). I associate these bandages with my missing-fingered schoolmate, although I think I was disturbed by the bandages before I ever met him.

posted by william 7:22 AM
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I remember how trucks were unloaded into supermarkets in New York when I was a child -- particularly at Key Foods on 92nd Street. The truck parked on the street, a side door opened, and crates were sent down a sort of tilted ramp covered with loud rollers. Half-way down the ramp was a gap for pedestrians to go through, where one of the relay people stood. When the gap was clear he'd grab the crates barrelling at him and toss them onto the next ramp. From there they went down to the much steeper rubber treadmill through the trap door in the sidewalk and into the basement of the store. I seem to recall as many as four people working these relays. One inside the truck would toss crates to the person at the top of the first ramp, who would send it down to the guy at the gap, who would toss it onto the second ramp, at whose bottom a fourth guy would put it on the treadmill: of course there were people off-loading in the basement too. I don't think I've seen this in years: I think now all supermarkets have loading bays into which the trucks back up. The rollers with their metal wheels were really loud, just as rollerskates and scooters and skateboards were really loud. There was something comforting -- substantial and solid -- about all that noise and competence.

posted by william 11:35 AM
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I remember Kitty Genovese. Though maybe I remember the first or second anniversary of her murder when some newspaper wrote a retrospective article on it. I remember picturing the scene, very much from the point of view of the people watching, never from her point of view. This may be because it didn't occur to me that she could have known that people were watching her and failing to call the police. When I pictured the scene, I imagined that I would call the police, but the story was so gripping that in my imagination I don't actually imagine myself pulling away from the scene: satisfied that I would do the right thing I just imagined the terrible scene over and over again, re-enacting in my own mind what all the witnesses actually did. Later I always thought of Kitty Genovese when the Genovese crime family was mentioned; and also when I saw Genovese drug stores.

I remember when everybody was reading Richard Brautigan. I really liked Trout Fishing in America. The idea that that could be the name of a person. And for some time I signed letters "As always," just as Lee Melon did in A Confederate General from Big Sur.

posted by william 7:06 AM
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I remember flight-bags -- my parents used to get them when they flew to Europe, maybe on charter flights. They had these lovely blue Swissair flight bags, which were perfect for carrying things around in. They gave me one which I used to carry my books in, till it was completely tattered and peeling and dilapidated. Now Swissair is gone too.

posted by william 7:11 AM
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I remember National Lampoon's Foto Funnies. There were two per issue. One of them always had a frame with a topless woman. I read them avidly. I also remember that Time Magazine went through a period at about the same time when you could find one discreetly titillating photo in each issue. One that I remember was about T-shirts with photographic designs on them: it was illustrated with a picture of a woman wearing a T-shirt with a photo of bare breasts. Neither National Lampoon nor Time magazine was actually titillating -- finding these photos was more like scoring points. Unlike most of my male contemporaries, I never felt that way about National Geographic, though. I guess the photos there really did seem necessary to illustrate the boring stories.

posted by william 7:04 AM
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I remember Uncle Martin's antennae in My Favorite Martian. I see now that they represented TV itself -- Ray Walston was an early precursor to Max Headroom. But I loved his powers: invisibility, levitation, all on the basis of the antennae. I guess these were powers also conveyed by TV: transport at a distance, and invisibility from the world. I always regretted not seeing the first episode; just as I regretted not seeing the first episode of Gilligan's Island. I remember that I wanted to come from Mars too, and later lied to my schoolmates and told them the next best thing, that I was born in Milano (as I called it). I remember also thinking that if I tried hard enough I'd be able to levitate things, and feeling a sort of muscular effort in my index finger-nails if I pointed them and tried hard enough to levitate (I can still do that). I remember thinking that Uncle Martin's antennae must have really hurt in the episode(s?) when they were bent. I remember not being sure whether it was a coincidence or not that he was called Martin. I remember watching both The Courtship of Eddie's Fatherand The Incredible Hulkall on the basis of my liking Bill Bixby because he was a team with Ray Walston. Now both are dead.

posted by william 7:32 PM
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I remember a very few really high fevers -- so bad that the bed felt somehow like a rack or bed of nails. The soft sheets and the whole surface somehow felt like a knife edge extended to the size of a mattress but still pressing into me like a blade. The whole world, no matter how smooth -- smoothness itself -- felt jagged.

I remember, though, that I felt this way only very rarely. Once I came home with a fever of 105F (=40.6C) -- I fell on 89th street and decided to rest for a little while before turning down into the back courtyard (past the tailor's shop and the bird-bath and too the back door near the milk-machine where you had to ring to get the doorman to let you in once security increased in the building a little bit), but two men picked me up and carried me in to the building; my mother's mother was there, and my father's mother joined her. I thought I felt fine, and when my fever spiked again later, as Dr. Feilendorf (of the soap bubbles) said it would, I protested violently against their calling her again. But she said they did right. Still I felt fine, and rarely remember feeling sick when I was kept home from school because of a fever.

I remember also, and conversely, that I never thought that aspirin or cough medicine made me feel better. My father used to give me hot milk with honey when I had a cough, which he would cool by pouring it from one glass to another back and forth. I also was skeptical that this could cool anything, even though I sort of intuited the principle. I was a great believed in empirical results over theory, and to me it didn't seem as though the liquid was cooling off. Now I swear by ibuprofen.

posted by william 2:27 PM
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I remember that my father would always order slices of Sicilian when we went to Phil's (of the conical cups and formica counters) to get pizza. That seemed like another attribute of paternality, like shaving, and rinsing his face with icy water, and the stinging Old Spice he put on afterwards, and the cuff-clips when he went bike-riding -- some aspect of competence appropriate to him and to him only, some relation to things in the world that were oriented towards him and not towards any of us. Occasionally my grandfathers would do some fatherly things, like shaving or allowing us to have pizza. But they never went so far as ordering slices of Sicilian or using Old Spice. After all, they weren't fathers.

I remember the calm dusty daylight on the carpet in the dining room (where sometimes my mother's mother would knead me like bread while I squealed with both puzzlement and delight -- I didn't know what "kneading" was, and I didn't know why poking me with her fingers was a way of "needing" me; it's not that it seemed funny that she needed to poke me -- it seemed funny that there was this adult way of needing that had nothing to do with requiring, with necessity, with her desires or demands, but was rather some sort of laying on of hands which was somehow necessary to me, as though needwere an actually transitive verb -- like knead -- as though she were making me necessary, but to whom? to my life, or as though she were making living necessary to me, finally making it necessary to me to undergo being kneaded by her, with mingled puzzlement and delight) -- I remember the daylight when I was alone in the apartment, so weekdays when for some reason I was home from school for some reason and the dining room light was off but the room was flooded with daylight. Under the table it was darker, but still perfused with light, and things felt very calm.

I remember when we moved we got some Persian carpet and I was obsessed with the patterns in it, trying to resolve them into faces and into clear repetitions, without ever succeeding. I was also curious about why the carpets had fringes.

posted by william 6:30 AM
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I remember that I learned the ugly word sleuth (particularly ugly as a verb: sleuthing) from The Hardy Boys.

posted by william 11:12 AM
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I remember that we would explore the woods near the cottage we rented from the Herings in Stormville. ( I remember that their New York number was FI 8-8888: easy to remember as FI(ve) eights.) Under the great willow tree behind the house was a stabilizing wire covered with a small horeshoe of rubber. I described it to my mother and she told me it was a lightning rod, but I don't think she was right. She explained what a lightning rod was, which seemed pretty interesting. Also, farther in the woods, we came upon stakes with little ribbons hanging on them. I asked her about these, and showed her one, and she said they were "limits." I thought that was strange and thrilling -- in the woods there was a place where the property ended and strange unknown property began, and these stakes which seemed as immemorial as the trees marked that place.

posted by william 9:51 AM
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I remember that when we went to the movies or to a play or concert, my father would hold all the tickets, and shepherd us in ahead of him past the usher. I was always self-conscious about this, thinking the usher would think we didn't have tickets; then my father would hand over all four. I was always impressed that we were never challenged, and always worried that this time we would be. I thought this was a complacent affectation on my father's part, making life more difficult for the usher, and not till years later did I realize it made life easier, since the usher could tear all four tickets at once.

posted by william 2:25 PM
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I remember liverwurst sandwiches. Does anybody still eat them? Appalling, yet I used to love them.

I remember Topo Gigio.

I remember the gear changer on three-speed bikes. You had to coast to change gears. You did it with your index finger, moving a little trigger on a thin metal box mounted on the handle-bars just past your right hand. This was another failure of symmetry which bothered me when I first saw it, but which I got over.

I remember vinyl saddle-bags, and how quickly they cracked, and metal handle-bar baskets. I remember that my father had metal cuff-clips which he wore when he rode his bike.

posted by william 6:44 AM
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I remember Theodore H. White's series of books beginning with The Making of the President 1960 and going on, I think to 1968 or 1972. They were part of the gravitas surrounding the office and the institution. Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972took specific aim at White's books. But I remember them as part of the array of adult books which supported the adult world which surrounded me. The Britannica Book of the Year,their yearly supplement, to which my father subscribed and which he made more room for on the bookshelf every spring, had some of the same effect, but less so since it seemed about ephemera, unlike the great permanence of fact in the Encyclopedia proper.

posted by william 8:48 AM
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I remember novelty trading cards that came out around sixth grade. They consisted of some sentiment or cliche on one side, and a striking punchline or sight gag on the other. I remember two of those: one was "You look like a million dollars" -- flip -- "All green and wrinkled!" And the other: "Let me hold you in my arms" -- flip -- "All four of them" with a very well done black and white photo of a beautiful smiling woman with four arms extended towards the camera. They were bare from the shoulders down, so you could see them fused just below the shoulder. I showed this to our housekeeper who thought it was genuine: we argued about this, but she asserted that such sports existed and that I was naive to think the photo was doctored. I knew I was right, I think because if they'd used a real sport of nature she wouldn't have looked so much like a model on a TV game show.

I remember Jeopardy with Art Fleming. I remember that there was only one "Daily Double." Hugh Cramer and I used to watch it. I remember always being surprised that people went down the categories in order, from $10-50 (not the later 100-500), for example. I wondered whether this was an unwritten rule. Jeopardy was on during school hours, so I only got to watch it on vacation or when I was sick. It was my favorite game show. I also liked Truth or Consequences, with Bob Barker (who had dark hair then -- later he became the senescent host of Let's Make a Deal). Contestants would be asked a hard riddle (with a funny answer). Bob Barker would say, very reassuringly, "Take your time," and half a second later the buzzer would squawk, and the contestants would have to take the consequences. But once I saw someone answer the riddle before the squawk. Bob Barker didn't know what to do. He made the guy go through the consequences anyhow, which I thought was unfair. Later I found out about Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (which James Merrill mentions in The Book of Ephraim), and I assumed the show was named after the town. Later still -- quite recently in fact -- I found out that the town was named after the show -- they were paid to take the name, and so they did.

posted by william 10:50 AM
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I remember how much I hated soft-boiled eggs. We had light blue (robin's-egg blue!) egg cups. My uptown grandfather liked three-minute eggs -- he'd place them in the egg-cup, crack them on top with a little egg-spoon, just a bit larger than a demi-tasse spoon, with some sort of scroll lattice work on the handle, and scoop them out. Every few months or so I'd emulate him, seeking to like this elegant ritual. But I never could. The egg-white was ok, if a little bit wobbly, but when I got to the hot yolk I just couldn't make myself acquire a taste for it. I think that I somehow felt very American when Silly Putty came out (or when I first heard of it -- I loved the way it could pick up comics) because it came in an egg-shaped container but what was inside was as wonderfully different from a soft-boiled egg as could be; and the container itself opened lengthwise without that mildly disturbing cracked and collapsing crown that I always produced by tapping on the top of the egg.

posted by william 10:13 AM
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I remember the little chrome fasteners on opera windows on cars (the triangular windows between the main window and the frame). You used to be able to open these windows, and get a little air into the car, which you could direct by the angle that you pivoted the window towards. I think the windows stopped opening when safety engineers decided that the chrome fasteners were a hazard, once they tried to recess everything in the interiors of cars, since they were a projecting piece of metal. It used to be these fasteners that you used a wire hanger to pull open when you were locked out of the car -- then you'd reach in and unlock the door. They were a great occupation for your hands on long car rides -- you could open and shut the latch, hang your fingers from its loop, press your mouth and tongue up against it, etc.

posted by william 11:00 AM
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I remember when they put convex mirrors in the elevator. I never saw the point, though they said it was to prevent crime (you could see who was coming; but really you only got a different angle on whoever was already in the elevator, or just stepping in). This was roughly the same time that they started saying that "all visitors must be announced." You used to be able just to walk into the building.

I remember signing in with my parents at their office buildings, after 6 and on weekends. I always thought they'd want indentification, or that they'd challenge us, but they never did, even when I was alone.

posted by william 3:52 AM
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I remember that we used to put pads on the dining room table before covering it with a table cloth to set it at meals. The pads were a sort of brown leather on top, with a cloth padding and green pool-table felt on the bottom. They hooked together with a sort of latch that went between two plies of the padding. They protected the table from spills. When guests came we didn't use them. They made it a little hard to do drawing or tracing on the table, because the sharp pencil (or compass point) would poke through the paper.

I remember also that my parents' twin beds had a hook and eye underneath that you hooked after making the beds to hold them together. I remember that my bed had three wooden slats, cut on a bias so that they looked like railroad ties laid diagonally, on which my matress lay. We would take the matress off and then take the wood out and fence with it or use the bedframe as a fort. I'd also dive (like Superman) off the counters (with the sizzler burn on it) on to the mattress, counting on the slats to hold me up.

I remember my "Impeach Nixon" bumber sticker, on my bookshelf already in 1969. Who knew that it would come true? But who knew he'd be re-elected?

I remember my "Play Soccer!" and "New York Cosmos" bumper stickers. There were on the car.

I remember my desk chair, bent metal and yellow foam rubber, and my individual experience of the generic memory of reading the label which said "Not to be removed under penalty of law except by consumer." I removed it and felt anxious. I think everyone has this memory because we all find these labels before we learn what the word consumermeans. It just seemed part of the general legal aura. It seemed weird that one wasn't allowed to remove the label, but no weirder than a lot of things. I certainly didn't confess it to anyone. Much later -- muchlater -- I learned with an odd kind of relief that what I'd done wasn't illegal. As though the chair had been a ticking time bomb of possible evidence until then.

posted by william 1:39 PM
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I remember John's Bargain Stores. There was one on 91st and Broadway, with its big red and white sign. Later, I think when they went bankrupt, it turned into an OTB parlor. I put a couple of $2 bets down on harness racing there, following my friend Howie Grunthal's tips (he knew the jockeys and knew the fixes), and won a few dollars. But I missed John's.

posted by william 5:47 AM
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I remember fringed buckskin jackets.

posted by william 8:59 AM
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I remember "The Damned." Visconti's movie (as I much later found out). It was playing at The New Yorker, and I remember how strikingly austere those two words were on the movie marquis. They probably set up, for me, the power, later, of the "Give a damn." button.

posted by william 7:24 AM
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I remember that whenever I was wild and ungovernable, my parents threatened to send me to military academy. This was a threat that they had to explain, of course, and they never really made it so vivid as to make it positively fearful; but it was frightenening to think that they might allow me to live separately from them. Later, in soccer camp in high school, we stayed at NYMA (New York Military Academy), and heard the kids there chanting the wake-up chant ("Wake up, NYMA! Wake up, NYMA, wake up!") every morning at 6:00 am. My parents also instituted a very short-lived protocol in which I was supposed to call them "Sir!" and "Ma'am." I liked Ma'ama little better, because it sounded like "Mom." I certainly won that one, since they gave up on it fast -- maybe the first battle I remember winning. I think this all started in the same scene of rebuke in which my father called me a "shirker."

posted by william 9:18 AM
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I remember "Tovar, the eighth man." "Call Tovar, the eighth man! Call Tovar, the eighth man. Stronger than a rocket! Faster than a jet! His a mighty ?-er! He's the one to get!" And I remember Astroboy.

posted by william 12:11 PM
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I remember, remembering my grandmother's camera, that there was a little grassy area, a sort of elevated terrace, down Haven Avenue, overlooking the river, where she used to like to take out pictures. When Columbia Presbyterian built up the medical center they must have got rid of it.

I remember awnings, and how some buildings had them and others not.

I remember that your heart skips a beat if you sneeze (though I doubt this).

I remember Clark Graebner and Stan Smith. I saw both of them play at Forest Hills. I remember Clark Graebner because I first got obsessed with tennis after reading John McPhee's Levels of the Gameabout a single match between Graebner and Arthur Ashe. Graebner was the bad guy in the book, and Smith became a bad guy to me too, because he was ranked higher than Ashe, who was my hero. Ashe was playing as an amateur and didn't take money for a long time. I remember that Graebner was a CPA, which also let me think it ridiculous that a near-sighted desk-worker like my father should try to go up against Ashe, and should so nearly defeat him. I saw Smith on center court, and Graebner on a side court playing doubles. I also saw an Australian player on a side court -- not Laver or Newcombe but I think the third-seeded Australian -- Ken Elston or something?

posted by william 7:05 AM
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I remember that my (uptown) grandmother had a little box camera that you looked down at to take a picture. (You can almost do this again with digital cameras, but you don't get a good angle on the screen.) We would look at her (she took pictures of us whenever she could) and she would be standing ten feet away not looking back but straight down. The top of the camera had a mirrored mirrored viewfinder. Later I discovered that the camera also had a normal viewfinder, and I wrote it off to her perversity that she took pictures the way she did or that she had a camera that took pictures the way that one did. Later still I discovered that the lower angle made for a better perspective, even if the set-up was harder. There was something odd and estranging about the fact that we were looking at her but she wasn't looking back as she took pictures which were supposed to show what she was seeing. But she was looking back (by looking down) -- only we couldn't know that.

posted by william 8:16 AM
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I remember wooden escalators, with their clapping wooden teeth. (I think when I visited Mount Vernon and found out that George Washington had wooden teeth I made a subliminal connection.) They seemed comfortable somehow, too old-fashioned to be scary They come for me from the same associative period as the old IND straw-plaited subway car seats.

posted by william 8:40 AM
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