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 an attitude to seesaws I had related to one I already posted about. Kids -- slightly older girls mainly -- would sing the words to "Seesaw, Margery Daw" as they seesawed. I didn't really know the words, and I couldn't really seesaw the way they did. It was like their knowledge of hopscotch and of skipping rope, an expert knowledge I would never have. Hugh and I and several others occasionally played some version of hopscotch we didn't understand. In particular, I had and have no idea how the key was used. And I remember a champion rope skipper who could skip two ropes at once, held by her friends and going in opposite directions. I remember that rope-skipping also had to do with some boxes chalked on the sidewalk, which I didn't quite understand, though they seemed more intuitive than hopscotch. I remember the lovely, beautifully contoured wooden handles of skipping ropes, the rope pulled through a hole drilled lenght-wise and tied into a knot at the end which fit a recess at the end perfectly so that the handle was compact and smooth.

posted by william 7:13 AM
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