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 the frenetic precursor to doodling that we did in third grade or so -- violently filling a looseleaf page with Bic-pen scribbling. In particular I remember Andrew Sadler covering a page with ink, pen held in a fist-grip. I remember what a looseleaf page completely covered with scribbling felt like: the pressure of the pen indenting it everywhere, the ubiquitous ink tracks slightly smoother than the paper around it. I remember that the paper was palpably heavier, and behaved differently when you waved it around in the air -- had more flex to it.

posted by william 8:56 PM
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I remember cups. I think I became aware of them in tenth grade, when I changed schools. Boys would make jokes when we were at the gym or playing soccer -- "Aw, good thing you were wearing a cup! -- God, I hope he was wearing a cup!" I wasn't sure whether they were jock straps (which I'd now been wearing since maybe sixth grade) or not. It was obvious that jock straps offered you some protection, but not enough to provoke so much interest. And really we were careful (I was careful) not to look at kinds adjusting their genitals in the locker room. Besides very few boys did wear them. When I finally saw one I knew what it was immediately. A triangular plastic shape with holes, a kind of hockey mask for your privates, it seemed uncomfortable. I never wore one, even though our soccer coach, when I was on the team, required us to. He also required us not to smoke, a rule widely ignored as well. (Now I don't think I've seen a cup since college: my lacrosse playing roommates used to keep them on their dressers.)

posted by william 7:42 AM
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I remember The Man Who Never Was, which I recall as by Barbara Tuchman, that adult writer of The Guns of August but which probably wasn't by her. The true story of a planted corpse, who had false papers and seemed to have been killed in a plane crash. (I know! I'm confusing it with Tuchman's Zimmerman Telegram, er, I think.) The dead man is supposed to have drowned, so they need someone who'll seem to have drowned when the Nazis do an autopsy. They get a youngish man who's died of pneumonia. I remember learning there that you get pneumonia by getting liquid into your lungs (that's why it looks like drowning). This worried me into experimenting when I went running in the mornings. I'd let a bit of saliva kind of sit on my tongue as I ran, held up by the surface tensions of the bubbles within it, and see whether I could inhale the saliva into my lungs as I panted. I somehow knew that it couldn't be that easy to get pneumonia, or to have the experience of drowning -- but knowing this, or thinking that I knew it, was part of the temptation of doing it. Of course, as it turns out, I never even got myself to cough this way.

posted by william 6:53 PM
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I remember that there never was a perfect age for the seesaw. I remember not knowing what it was. This must have been when we went to the playground before I'd started school, so that the playground was pretty empty, and in particular there were no kids on the seesaw. I remember my mother explaining to me what it was, and telling me that I'd get to go on it when I was older. Now I was too light and it was slightly dangerous. Then I remember kids seesawing, and they did it right, each sitting at their end, behind the handles and going up and down. But I don't remember ever seesawing that way. Either I was too heavy (when my little sister and I would seesaw), so I had to sit closer to the middle, in front of the handle, or I was too light, and couldn't seesaw my partner quite as I wanted to, since he had to sit either too close and lose the benefit of the full arc, or if he sat at the end of the plank I couldn't really make him go as high as he'd want. They were so appealing, seesaws, and I'm still wistful that they never yielded quite what they promised.

posted by william 11:45 AM
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I remember feeding Powell (the dog) cans of wet dog food. I liked meatballs. You could get horsemeat too! (Now I think they just call it meat.) I liked the meatballs because they poured out of the can and you didn't have to use the dog-food spoon my mother had designated. I hated washing the spoon after feeding Powell. I also hated washing his dish, as my mother required me too, and I would try to just rinse it or just wipe it out with a paper-towel -- but never both. We put the dish on a rubber mat. I was grateful when Powell would lick it clean. But my mother was right -- both the dish and the mat attracted roaches.

posted by william 7:05 PM
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I remember when we were tested for our athletic ability at the 92nd Street Y. Was it Bill-Dave doing it? I tried to climb the knotted rope but didn't get very far. One kid touched the ceiling. And I was awful at chin-ups. But otherwise I think I was ok: sit-ups and push-ups and other activities you could cheat on. I think that my inability to do chin-ups was somewhat shocking to me. There was something the human body could do -- other kids were doing them -- that mine just couldn't. It wasn't a question of fear or technique, like rope-climbing or no-parking sign shimmying. It was just impossible. Without knowing it, perhaps, this was my first experience of what aging would be like: not being able to do what nevertheless I know can be done.

posted by william 7:27 PM
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I remember Ralph Petrillo saying of various smoking athletes at our school that the could work off the effects of smoking by training. Our soccer team coach said if we were caught smoking we'd be kicked off the team, because the carbon monoxide would interfere with our aerobic efficiency. But I liked the idea of being able to work off the effects of smoking. I started smoking senior year. We all smoked in the pool room in the basement of one of the school buildings. I think you weren't supposed to smoke there -- only on the porch of the art building, where the administration could see you (and stop you if your parents hadn't given you permission) -- but really no administrators ever came down there, and how could you play pool without smoking?

posted by william 7:44 AM
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I remember that after my parents bought 7-F and while they were remodelling it I would run like a maniac through the empty and tarped rooms, sprinting through the apartment with pure glee. Sometimes Tommy and Ken would do this with me as well. I can't believe how much fun that was! And now, remembering this, I can measure the change in myself over time, remembering how different my attitude to the empty place was when my parents moved out of 7-F about fourteen years later.

I remember that there was a toddler who lived above us, and whenever he went running around upstairs, the chandelier would shake and tinkle in the most annoying way. I think of this as happening for years, but of course the toddler was only a toddler for a little while. I don't recall ever being annoyed by any other noise there. But my mother wouldn't allow me to play the piano after nine -- this was one of those rules of etiquette that it became clear all adults knew. It also meant that if I stalled, I could avoid practicing.

I remember my mother considered renting a piano, but then bought one -- an upright. I remember that the B above middle C made a distinctive, untuned, rasping sound.

I remember their moving the chandelier from 2-G to 7-F and my surprise that fixtures could be moved. This seemed a category mistake.

posted by william 11:49 PM
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I remember being disturbed by the large hydraulic mechanisms that slowed down slamming doors, especially doors out of buildings, doors with EXIT signs, at school and perhaps at my uptown grandmother's building. The mechanism was asymmetrical. It was big. It was vaguely anthropomorphic, like a huge arm, sleeve rolled up past the elbow. That anthropomorphism made it seem as though it chose to be mechanical rather than human. This seemed an adult choice. So it seemed adult: powerful and indifferent to the way it disturbed me. Now I don't notice those mechanisms any more.

posted by william 12:12 AM
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I remember subway workers on the tracks of the 96th street station. There was (probably still is) a way down to the tracks -- a kind of ladder-stair -- at the Northern end of the platform. I seem to remember the workers wearing yellow jumpsuits. This was before the advent of the bright red reflective-strip vests. What I remember that I think is different from today is that they would step into the columns between the tracks when trains came and wait till they left. This means that sometimes they'd be between two trains, with only a couple of feet of space to stand in. I think now that when workers go onto the tracks they shut the track down to avoid any possibility of accident. But then they just cooly, expertly, knew where and when to stand. I liked that expertise.

posted by william 7:27 AM
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I remember the song "Arizona:"

AriZOna! Strip off your rainbow shades!
AriZOna! Take another look at the world right now!
AriZOna! Da da da da da da
AriZOna! Hey won't you go my way?

Strip off your pride,
You're acting like a teeny-bopper only child.
Scrape off the paint
From the face of a little town saint.

When Arizona iced tea came in, the fact that this song was part of my history made it appealing to me.

posted by william 12:24 AM
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I remember Speed Racer. Who has, I think, returned.

posted by william 1:48 PM
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I remember my uptown grandmother telling me that I-80 (though she just pointed to it; I didn't know the "name" of the road) went all the way from the George Washington Bridge to San Francisco. I was as amazed as she wanted me to be. It did seem amazing that one road could go all that way. I somehow imagined it -- I have no idea why -- passing through an avenue of arched beech or elm trees, all the way from New York to California, straight as an arrow or a Roman road. Later I drove to California and back, on scenic routes, but I think I've been on most of I-80; and it's not at all what I pictured, but crooked a lot and sometimes distorted, much like my grandmother's fairy-tale witch's fingers.

posted by william 10:13 PM
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I remember electricity! You could touch someone touching base and be safe. (This was really closer to magnetism, though, of the sort Plato describes in the Ion.)

posted by william 7:15 PM
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I remember that McGovern picked Eagleton, and then he turned out to have had electroshock (I think). McGovern was behind him 1000% until he then went to Sargent Shriver, who was supposed to be a Kennedy, but didn't strike me as one. I remember that the New York Magazine monthly competition was about double dactyls or something similar that month, and that one of the honorable mentions was:

Up again, down again
Thomas F. Eagleton,
George was behind you
1000%
Bum ba bum bum ba bum bum ba bum bum ba bum
Then as the nation (and Maine) goes
He went.

I liked recognizing the saying: "As Maine goes, so goes the nation," which I think Mr.Grotsky told us about in history when explaining bellweather states. But I didn't quite get how the parantheses fit grammatically; now it makes sense, but not quite the logical sense I then expected it to.

posted by william 11:10 PM
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I remember my mother telling me not to just sit around like a bump on a log. I assumed this was a saying, though I don't know that I've heard it other than from her and from my repetitions of her. I also remember both my parents telling me not to stare off into space. But they liked it when I was thinking! They didn't seem to realize that when I was staring off into space I was thinking. Sometimes, too, I would do it consciously, or self-consciously. I remember doing it in a car on the way to Stormville once.

posted by william 7:35 AM
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I remember starting this blog, based on Perec and Brainard, two years ago today. But interestingly enough I am surprised my some of the entries I've occasionally reread. (I don't reread them much, although sometimes I do to see whether I've already posted on something.) So part of what I discover is that recovering some of these memories also tends to make them volatilize, as though once they're on paper they lose some substance in my mind. But this may just be an effect of the shifting archeology of these recussitations. Or it may be that things continue to fade. although they also continue to surface.

I notice as well that my attitude towards writing these memories down has changed. That's probably just an effect of writing: where it gets interesting though is that it also means that things I hadn't quite thought of as memories -- things that were the background for memories, a background I hadn't thought to attend to, I am now more sensitized to, and am thinking about them as memories as well. What my parents thought about things when they rebuked me for example. What the rooms looked like. What I expected from them. I'm paying more attention to what I see in the peripheral vision of this commemorative perspective.

I estimate, somewhat conservatively, that I've probably put down over four hundred memories -- probably considerably more (partly depending on how you count) -- almost all from before college, therefore from somewhat before my eighteenth birthday. Say 365 of these are from different days, which also seems reasonable, if not more than reasonable. That would mean I remember something from at least one out of every seventeen days of my youth. This is somewhat surprising to me. And I think there's more coming.

posted by william 9:50 AM
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I remember a red ball. I think I remember the same ball rolling. (I also remember a ball with a blue stripe or pair of stripes, that was bigger, and maybe also a wooden ball of some sort.) I think I remember the red ball rolling because I think I remember that I figured out that to get it you couldn't run to where it was but had to anticipate where it was going. I was glad to realize this, but there was no sense of triumph to it, because, I think, I also thought it made the world much more complex than it had to be.

posted by william 6:27 PM
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I remember Bebe Rebozo. I was amazed that Nixon's friendship with him wasn't by itself enough to scotch Nixon's career. I remember a photo of the two of them in a sailboat, both looking disreputable. They were like movie villains! Didn't the voters of this country go to the movies? At least Nixon and Rebozo made it plausible that naifs in movies might not see immediately who the obvious villains were. Scant compensation, that.

posted by william 7:09 AM
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I remember how surprised I was whenever my father took me to a James Bond movie (after the first one I saw, From Russia with Love) by Sean Connery's voice. I always forgot that low, gravelly, Scottish bass that he has, and always expected, I think, something closer to Robert Vaughan's Napoleon Solo, the closest thing on TV to the divine Bond movies. It always took me three or four minutes to get used to Sean Connery's voice: and then it seemed transparent again.

posted by william 11:58 AM
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I remember finding (and stealing) the low-class porn the doormen kept in their little office/lounge/locker-room behind the milk machine room. They kept it on top of a locker where they hung their coats. I was sometimes left in this room when they were looking for a passkey or tool of some sort. I also played chess here with the Albanian doorman who had once been the junior champion of Yugoslavia, and who was great. But I set a trap and won his queen once! For a knight. (I was way ahead then, but still lost the game.) At some point I discovered the porn, mainly magazines showing women with absurdly large breasts. They were unappealing, but it was porn, so I managed to make them appealing to myself. I didn't much think about why the doormen had the porn: I assumed they were roughly as interested as I was (that is, without any of the cynicism or attitude of porn as purely instrumental), and that somehow that interest was (for them) entirely visual. They liked paging through the pictures, not taking the magazines to the bathroom with them. To think now of paging through other people's porn stash! I treasured the stash I found carefully. I hid it in the foldout couch where I used to hide comics. And yet I still think that they only paged through the porn, as a way of alleviating their boredom. It felt (and feels) as though they would have been too old and too bored to get more excited or more active than that.

posted by william 12:29 AM
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I remember that you had to pay more to go to Far Rockaway on the subway. (I think I did once, for some appointment nearby.) I also remember that there a couple of college students, when I was in junior high, spent twenty-five or so hours one very long day and night riding every mile of the subway. They ate only sandwiches. The Times wrote them up. I was somehow confused, and thought they rode one line end to end, and that it was so long it took them 25 hours. (J.G. Ballard has an early story where this sort of subway system exists.) I imagined the engineers of this line changing every eight hours (I didn't consider how they'd get home, though), like the Pony Express. Later, when I rode the West Side IRT number 1 train to the last stop on 242nd St. each day, I was even more puzzled about how large Brooklyn must be for a single ride to take 25 hours.

posted by william 1:45 PM
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