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 our first desktop computer. I remember it took some time to get used to the mouse. I remember exploring all the installed programs except PowerPoint because I assumed it had something to do with the power source for the computer. I remember how unresponsive and unexciting the old DOS terminals at schools seemed in comparison.

posted by sravana 7:16 AM
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I remember smoothing and holding down the pleats of my mother's sari once in a while when she was getting dressed to go out. I remember her saying she did the same for her mother, who did the same for her mother.

I remember the 9th grade history teacher telling us that saris are draped over the left shoulder so the right, dominant arm is free. I was impressed with this little bit of pragmatism in its design.

posted by sravana 1:33 AM
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I remember my parents taking us to Venice, and all the pigeons in St. Marks.

posted by William 9:02 AM
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I remember that pencil sharpeners were screwed in to the wooden frame of the blackboard at the front of the classroom.  I remember the dry, woody smell of pencil shavings, and the sour scent of the ground lead.

posted by Rosasharn 12:27 AM
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I remember small colorful plastic discs that were meant to keep pairs of socks together. They didn't.

posted by Rosasharn 9:14 AM
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I remember that I thought the words of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song, after "Oil, that is.  Black gold," were "Texas T." I thought this because the "the bubblin' crude" you saw coming out of the ground was basically T-shaped, and that the idea was the T in Texas was oil.  That made no sense, except as what characterized the state.  Only recently did I hear the phrase "Texas tea" in some other context.

posted by William 12:09 PM
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I remember my surprise when I first realized that under the molded cardboard that held fruit -- apples, oranges, pears -- in the supermarket there were more layers of fruit; the fruit wasn't only displayed; some of it held up the cardboard cradling the other fruit. This was part of my general, intermittent surprise at things beneath the surfaces of the perceived world.  This was interesting but sad. The world was not some eternal substrate supporting and guaranteeing its appearances, the face it showed us. It was as changeable and fragile and ephemeral frameless as its daily surfaces.  What we saw wasn't based on anything more real - it was supported only by itself. 

posted by William 9:13 AM
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I remember my uptown grandparents listening to the Kol Nidre on WQXR at the beginning of Yom Kippur.  That was their radio station anyhow, and I remember the announcements that WQXR would broadcast it when my grandfather (the only person in our family who had a car) was driving me to their house, or driving me home.

posted by William 12:07 PM
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I remember the duh! moments of figuring out the meanings of opaque words. Alsedindun, as I frequently heard my parents say, was actually "all said and done." Standertease was "stand at ease." Faps was just an abbreviation for Frank Anthony Public School -- not a distinct school by itself. Senmarks was Saint Marks. When I was little older: polycot was a compound, polyester-cotton, and that meant that terrycot was terry-cotton, though I didn't know "terry" was abbreviating. (I also remember realizing that art-silk was a clever euphemism for artificial silk.) 

posted by sravana 2:10 AM
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I remember David Frost.  I was somehow aware of The David Frost show, maybe as the first adult eponymous show whose inception I remember: all the other shows -- Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, David Suskind, etc. -- were just part of the eternal background of the TV schedule, like the Tonight Show and the Danny Kaye show.  I remember when the Soupy Sales show started broadcasting on TV too, so I guess the David Frost show was the grown-up version of that kind of change in the presiding deities of TV, but he was much less interesting to me than Soupy Sales.  I was very surprised when he interviewed Nixon -- this seemed more incongruous, by far, than Nixon's "Sock it to me" moment on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.  (They too were new figures on the scene, but it wasn't called the Dan Rowan show, and even if it had been, it wouldn't have been the kind of interview show that Griffin, Cavett, Suskind and Frost were doing, and that somehow I thought of Sonny Fox, Sandy Becker and Soupy Sales as doing also, but with kids.)

posted by William 12:10 PM
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I remember feeling with my tongue for the grown-up tooth that would replace any baby tooth I lost.  Feeling for the new tooth's eruption from the gum, and the pleasure I took when my tongue could explore this new, impinging but somehow familiar surface in my mouth.

posted by William 1:04 PM
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I remember Hai King, the Chinese restaurant in Hyderabad, and my mother's nostalgia about eating there as a child. The food was good, but didn't match up to how fond she was of it. But she loved it too much to be wrong, so I convinced myself to love it too.

I remember that American Chop Suey had a white sauce rather than the red of Chinese Chop Suey, and we only ever ordered the latter. But some restaurants swapped the two.

I remember eating the green chilies that came with Chicken 65 -- how flavorful and painfully hot they were, the temporary relief of drinking water, and starting over again.

posted by sravana 5:27 PM
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I remember being surprised that a ton weighed 2,000 pounds. I learned that from some word problem in an elementary school math book. Until then I thought I knew that a ton was a thousand pounds, which seemed a reasonable base-10 way to do weights and measures.

posted by William 4:26 PM
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I remember the strange, oddly unpleasurable, experience of cutting the end off my dog Powell's flea and tick collar.  Somehow I could think of the collar as okay, not noxious, once it was around his neck and a collar.  But the dangling end had to be cut off and disposed of, because it was poisonous (as was its foil envelope), a piece of insecticide impregnated plastic, which contaminated the scissors that cut it, and jarred flea dust onto my clothes when the scissors finally snapped through.  The scissors had to be rinsed too, but where?  The kitchen sink seemed wrong, though they were kept in a closet off the kitchen; but the bathroom sinks, with their toothbrushes, seemed wronger.  All this did have a somewhat placating effect on the way I thought about the proper collar itself, though: just a part of the dog's outfit and not a strip of poison, so it was the short term discomfort that made it reasonably easy not to mind the collar on the dog (though I would try to keep him from sleeping in my bed for a day or so after he got a new one).

posted by William 10:38 AM
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I remember that on hikes when we chattered and nagged our mother she would shush us because, she said, she wanted to "commune with nature."

posted by William 1:16 PM
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I remember a small display of human fetuses in jars in the biology lab. It was fascinating, of course, as a window into creatures of an unseen world, a scientific curiosity that was really more about fantasy, much like dinosaur skeletons (which I didn't see until some years later). And it was morbid in a way that I sensed but didn't fully appreciate. And it was mysterious because -- where in the world did they come from? I vaguely knew about abortions and miscarriages, but it didn't seem possible that there were so many fetuses that every school in the country would have half a dozen. I remember thinking it strange that they weren't too expensive for our school to own. I asked my mother this and she was evasive but relatively nonchalant: they came from hospitals, and there were assuredly more than enough of them. I remember their color, light and translucent, and the size of the largest one, which wasn't very far along, but had, I think, ears and fingers. The jars immediately next to them held snakes. I remember noticing the display less each time I went into the lab.

posted by sravana 10:49 PM
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I remember buying books for the school year, and my mother and I spending an afternoon covering them with brown laminated paper on the floor of my room. I remember the fun of picking out sticker name labels for the books, the interest in which waned as I got older, but feeling that I had to hold on to it as a matter of tradition. I remember later covering my brother's books with him. I remember the excitement of looking through the textbooks, and staying up too late before the first day of school reading stories from the English texts.

posted by sravana 1:19 AM
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I remember the rare times that I hit all the right notes singing. And how surprised I always was that I did, and even more surprised that I knew I did. I thought, if I could identify when I was, by chance, correct, shouldn't I know (or be able to teach myself) how to sing perfectly all the time? I always knew exactly what to learn or read or memorize to perfect schoolwork (whether or not I ended up acting upon it), and never found homework solutions by accident -- or when it happened, it was tremendously unsatisfying. But singing was a black art in my mind, and stumbling upon it, once in a while, without intent or understanding, was a thrill.

posted by sravana 2:06 AM
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I remember that good guys never shoot anyone in the back, no matter how evil they are. This surprIsed me when my parents told me: after all they were bad guys. But that's what distinguished the good guys: they didn't shoot people in the back. And as for the bad guys, the fact that they were running away establIshed them as cowards, which was as decisive a proof of defeat as losing a gun battle would be.

posted by William 11:58 AM
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I remember learning the phrase "change of life," and learning about the phenomenon of menopause, watching All in the Family, when Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton, RIP today) goes through it.

posted by William 6:40 PM
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I remember loving how the goalie and fullbacks knew how to dispose themselves to defend against corner kicks, the intimate connections among the verticals of the goal posts, the goalie in his unique jersey setting the fullback at the near post, then touching the far post with his arm and shoulder to set himself up, and then the pause as though this were a natural scene, a stand of trees in the late autumn light braced and ready for what would come next, but for now suspended in this beautiful, painterly, expert configuration.

posted by William 10:50 AM
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I remember the first time I saw dry ice, at the science fair held in the gym, when I was in seventh grade.  I sort of knew what it was, which is to say I knew enough to be struck at once by the fact that I could see why it was called that.

posted by William 11:18 PM
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I remember chocolate covered ants.  We were at the White Plains Chinese restaurant with the Schubins and I think Wendy told me about them, maybe for some gross-out purpose.  I might have been already squeamish about the lobsters or crabs - we were waiting in the vestibule to sit down, so I might have seen some crustacea.  I didn't believe her, but then I did, since that's not the sort of thing a person makes up. So in college, where chocolate covered ants inevitably come up, I knew about them, with the same familiarity reaching back seven or eight years or so as everyone else.  I imagine everyone finds out about them, and realizes they have to be real after all, somewhere around age 10.

posted by William 8:19 AM
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I remember the optician's hot sand - the way they'd dip your glasses into it in order to make them pliable for fitting.  I had a vague but real background sense that this was just wonderful, that the kinds of things we played with in the sandbox were part of the real, adult world of technology or at least of the way it arranged and adjusted its objects.  And what was great about it was that the sand was hot.

Like everything else it the city, sand was a natural resource brought from elsewhere, and the way it was used for important things, for real things in the well-ordered adult world involved keeping it at a high temperature, just like hot water.  Hot sand and hot water were available, and a lovely thing to contrast with the cold drizzle and the sand in the sandbox it made just as cold available in our world.

I say "our" but it was more like "mine."  Because if I think of a sandbox now, of the Platonic form of the sandbox as instantiated in Riverside Park on 92nd street, at street level (unlike the two sandboxes in the playground which were somehow less interesting, because of all the other things there I guess: slides, monkey bars, swings) -- if I think of that elemental sandbox now, to think of it platonically I have to think of it as empty and lonely, in no way associated with other children, and if I think of it as empty it's thinking of the way it looks as we pass it in the car as my grandfather drives me uptown to my grandmother's house, so its background in my memory is dark, as though cold and about to rain, if not already drizzling, and I see it across the street and under the lowering trees of the park, only through glass from the back seat, through the glass of the car window and also of my well-fitting glasses.

posted by William 8:33 AM
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I remember that Vanzetti swallowed an olive whole the night of his execution, so that the tree of peace would grow from his grave.

posted by William 12:11 PM
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I remember that on the way to the United States, on the SS Saturnia, I wore a pair of trousers made out of an army blanket, and continued to wear those trousers for a while after our arrival, in February, 1947.  During the post-war period in Italy, army blankets and other army supplies were sold surreptitiously, and were prized for their warmth and the quality of the wool.  U.S. Army blankets were the most easily available.  They were olive drab and had a big US sign indelibly printed in the middle.  They were less prized than other blankets, because they had to be dyed and the tailor had to cut around the US logo. I had a coat made out of a US blanket dyed brown, while I was in Italy.  Sometimes the subterfuge failed and the military police would identify something made out of a US blanket and take it right off the wearer.  The most popular blanket was the Australian army blanket, which was made of the most wonderful wool, was a medium gray, and had two blue lines running in the middle across its length.  While ways had to be found to eliminate the blue lines, no dyeing was necessary, and the quality was superb.  I don't remember whether I had an Australian Army blanket garment, but I do remember that gray army socks, presumably Australian, were unraveled and made into balls of yarn which were then knitted into a sweater for me.  We also had an experiment with a parachute, which was a beautiful blue white, sily and satiny to the touch.  Nevertheless, an attempt to turn it into a blouse proved disastrous, mainly if I recall correctly because it was completely slippery.

I also remember the footwear we wore in Italy during the war and immediately after.  The soles of the sandals were sometimes made of cork, which was relatively elegant.  Many sandals, though, were soled with two pieces of wood, joined, at the point were the toes bend when one steps, by a piece of leather nailed by four nails to effect the joint. Modern platform shoes always remind me of those wooden soles.  I was found of that kind of sandal because the thick wood made me look taller and more sophisticated.  The problem was that the nails regularly came out and dug into people's bare feet, so that most of us had some sort of stigmata on the soles of our feet. 

posted by alma 9:40 PM
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I remember the guest room, which we rarely spent time in, and as a consequence, had a little bit of novelty, a little less familiarity, the feeling of not quite being at home, like spending a night in a relative's guest room.

posted by sravana 6:01 PM
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I remember that characters in books played chess on a chess table. It seemed so ritualistic, luxurious, and a bit wasteful -- a table whose sole function was the occasional game. I remember wondering if they had chess chairs too, or if they repurposed other chairs. The tables were not repurposed, as far as I could tell, because the game usually started with the players getting out the chess table.

posted by sravana 9:46 PM
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I remember a few early Passover celebrations (they blur together as one; maybe I am remembering only one) when both sets of grandparents were there, I think at my uptown grandparents' house, before they broke with each other.  (My downtown grandfather's funeral might have been the first time they all got together after the break.)

After that we sometimes had Passover at my uptown grandparents' house; Passovers with my downtown grandparents were often at our own house, but sometimes at theirs.  What I particularly remember was the way the males did the Seder and so were responsible for controlling the meal.  This was counter to almost every other night, where they just sat there accepting whatever their wives arranged.

My downtown grandfather and my father were both interested in the ritual.  It was as though matzoh were some magical implement that made them experts, at least compared to the rest of us.  They knew the blessings, they knew where the napkins went, they knew about the cup for Elijah, and so on.  They decided when the meal started.  My father loved singing dayenu raucously, and enlisting everyone else into singing it.

My uptown grandfather was far less interested in any of this.  His attitude towards the Seder was more or less his attitude towards any other meal.  My grandmother handed him something and he took it, phlegmatically.  On Passover, she handed him the Seder, and he did what he was supposed to.  She lit the candles first, of course, and that was the big thing.  Then my grandfather stood briefly at the head of the table, did what was required of him, and sat down as she dominated the room again, and I enjoyed my 7-Up or Canada Dry Ginger Ale, and wondered about the extra desert spoons we never used laid horizontally to the north of the fine china.

posted by William 9:07 AM
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I remember when I achieved what seemed to me a kind of graciousness in dealing with my parents' demands: I could tell them things that were technically truthful, instead of lying outright, but still deceive them when necessary, which I frequently deemed it to be.  But they cottoned on to this pretty quickly, and in long session of rebuke they forbade me to "give the wrong impression."

I hadn't known that there was a name for what I was doing.  That somewhat compensated for the loss of this new technique for protecting myself by misleading them.  It turned out that I was right to feel what I'd done as an achievement.  They even told me that in legal contexts (my mother being a lawyer), "giving the wrong impression" counted as breaking the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the oath I always looked forward to seeing a new witness take on Perry Mason.

So my sense that lies were childish defenses against adult power, needed by children but not by grownups, changed a little: now it turned out there was an adult way of lying, and that I'd discovered it myself, which contributed to my pride that I was becoming an adult, a person wise in the ways of adult life.  Even the fact that the agreed-on name for this kind of deceit took four words to say was a pleasure.

posted by William 11:55 PM
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I remember an illustration in a textbook, maybe in elementary school, that showed how strong an ant was supposed to be relative to its size by picturing a human-sized ant carrying a locomotive on its back.  The picture was supposed to be surprising, and it added to that surprise to see an ant carrying a locomotive around instead of riding on it.

posted by William 11:15 PM
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I remember snippets of the BQC opening theme song: "the questions come, they chase each other ... where everything I want to know is there ... books books books ...  the test of will, the test of mind, the test we're gonna win, the Bournvita quiz contest!"

posted by sravana 12:12 AM
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I remember the only time that my father hit me.  I was being dressed by our old time maid while he was watching (my mother was absent learning a craft in Paris; I might have been five or six).  While being dressed I was deliberately uncooperative and obstructive, squirming and making it difficult for her.  My father, a man of liberal views and a highly developed sense of justice, particularly where people in a subservient position were involved, could not stand the sight of the maid struggling.  Enraged, he hit my arm, which as it happened swelled up to some extent.  After the initial shock, I didn't consider the incident a big deal, but he was haunted by it, by his own rage and force, and he never hit me again.  He also never forgot it.

posted by alma 10:16 AM
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I remember indirectly that when I was two years old and alone at home with our maid, who like all our maids was a peasant woman recently arrived in the city (Sarajevo). I reached up to the stove, and spilled a pot of hot coffee all over my arm.  The maid applied the peasant remedy: putting my arm under cold water.  When my parents arrived, they had a fit, because the medical lore at the time (1934) required that the arm be treated with salves.  As was recognized later, the maid's remedy was the right one, and my arm bears no scar whatever of the incident.

posted by alma 10:10 AM
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I remember that when I had to clear the table -- a twice-nightly chore I despised, since my father just sat there, waiting for the magical transformation of surface, first for the fruit, which he wouldn't eat if there were any relics of the main meal still there, then for the end of the evening -- I would always feel still more oppressed when my mother made me get a tray from the kitchen to stack the plates and bowls on. I knew it was more efficient to take everything out on a tray, but I was too lazy to want to be efficient.  Getting the tray added a different kind of step to the whole process.  Instead of just mindlessly bringing in plate and glass and crumpled napkin as they came into my reach, I had to think about the thing, put it all together, come up with an algorithm that compressed the dirty dishes efficiently on the tray.  And the best way for me to both cherish and distract myself from my resentment at this chore (abraüm!, my father kept demanding) was to go off into my own world as I brought things haphazardly into the kitchen, that haphazardness a kind of protest, I think I now see, to the tyrannical orderliness my father insisted on.

posted by William 5:49 PM
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I remember reading a science fiction novel -- maybe Asimov, Fantastic Voyage even, though possibly Robert Silverberg, or Ray Bradbury? -- where some very skillful professional, perhaps a surgeon, is being described to a young, ambitious up-and-comer as having "forgotten more than you'll ever know."  And I wondered why that would be a good thing, since the young person was learning the essentials.  Had the wise professional forgotten them?  That didn't sound good.  And yet I knew this was praise of his skill.

posted by William 8:25 AM
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I remember running into the prayer room for a few seconds before rushing out to school. My mother would remind me ever so often, but after some time (4th or 5th grade?), she didn't have to. It had become an unavoidable part of the morning routine, an activity that didn't need a lot of thought or dedication or emotion or reluctance; like brushing teeth, it was just something that had to be done. A vague discomfiture would manage to linger through the day when it wasn't. I remembered this the past two mornings, not fully awake, about to get out into the crisp eastern light, cloudy sky, and hint of fog, like winter at home (well, everything except the temperature and snow, that is), feeling the tiniest compulsion to pop into a little room (the one that doesn't exist in here) and pray -- and pausing the tiniest bit as I put on my shoes, like I would sometimes, because: have I prayed or not? if I haven't, I'll have to take my shoes off, and I'm late already, or perhaps I can just pray from outside the door wearing the shoes, but I really may as well pray now before I put my shoes on, even if it's the second time.

posted by sravana 11:47 PM
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I remember that after the puppies were all given away or sold, I didn't know what to do with myself after school. Like Jonah with his gourd, I couldn't remember what had been fun before those puppies. And then my brother found the dirty young particolor cat with the scratch down his nose in the sandpit park with the seesaw, a few turnings away. He was not like the feral cats that are everywhere in Jerusalem. Gentle and friendly, he would rub himself against our legs, call to us, and sit in my lap. I called him Pooh. Once we were friends, he followed me around, but my mother did not allow him into our apartment. After that, I remember my confidence that something worth loving would always appear.

posted by Rosasharn 6:38 PM
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I remember the dilapidated pianos in various schools I went to, with many of the original ivory keys replaced by inelegant wood ones, like false teeth (which in a sense I guess they were) with relics of orange paint clinging to them.

posted by William 12:11 AM
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