Alexie, Alexie

Mustn't run and mustn't play,

Mustn't jump and mustn't climb,

Must be careful all the time

I remember that my father would put his socks on before his pants, which seemed strange to me.  In my memory the contrast of his black socks against his calves is very vivid. 

 I remember bobby pins -- how interesting they were, not quite as obviously useful as a paperclip, and neither mysterious nor unmysterious in the way that both my grandmothers and my mother and even girls my own age used them,

 I remember that, although we never bought them, a couple of friends would always have Danish all-butter cookies at their houses, and I was always amazed that it wasn’t like the butter in our fridge. They were cookies! Somehow sweet and crumbly and various despite being made only of one ingredient: butter. 

 I remember my father bringing a Superman comic to the summer house we were renting from friends in Stormville -- this was my first introduction to comics and comic books.  I was put off: after all it was a book!  It looked like work!  And it was a weekend!  (I might have been in Kindergarten.) And I really didn't like Superman's forelock.  But then he started reading me the comic as we looked at the panels and I was hooked.  Of course I perceived a resemblance between my father and Superman: both of them powerful adult males.  And I was surprised and hurt that Superman was vulnerable to kryptonite.  Family Romances!

 I remember not understanding why cans of soda had to be opened on both sides with the triangular blade of the can opener.  But of course if I tried only one opening the soda was much harder to drink,

I remember, hearing Simon and Garfunkle on the radio, that I thought the words were "'Cause they say, twas merry in time."  I still loved the song.

I remember learning that there was a name for God that you were never supposed to say.  But I didn't know what that name was!  So I asked my father, when we were on a weekend bike ride, and after hesitating, he said it was "Joe"!

I felt both disappointed and endangered at the same time.

I remember Nichelle Nichols.  Hers was the first time I heard the word "Uhura." Then I was very surprised to see my father had a book name Uhuru -- the famous book by Robert Ruark whence Gene Rodenberry must have got the name.  I really liked Uhura on the show: the way her intense focus on communication turned out to be as important as anything else.  Her character wasn't central to any episode but she seemed to represent everything that the long distance and information operators she updated meant to someone like me: the alert, highly competent, quick women who made the infrastructure of instantaneous communication and therefore of the whole country as a country work,

 I remember a moralizing poem I wrote in elementary school.  I don't think it was an assignment -- I just liked moralizing poems.  Actually all I remember is that the poem was about "Old Mrs. Mudrock" (I had no idea of what plausible names were back then), and two lines introducing the moral of the poem:

Old Mrs. Mudrock thought of something new.
In this world, her views were held by few.

I think she was a good person, discovering that the world was not as honest or reliable as she was, but it might be that she was a selfish person who needed to be taught a lesson. 

I think it's interesting that I remember those two lines, almost certainly because In this world is metrically bad.  I kind of new it at the time, but couldn't figure out how to solve it.  It's funny that it's the metrical solecism that made it stick out in my memory, in contrast to the usual idea that metrical regularity helps with memorization.

 I remember Dymo label makers!  Literal 3-D printers!  (You can still get them on eBay, and I guess you can get a modern version now from Amazon.)

 I remember that prep-school T-shirts had an odd vertical segment at the top coming down an inch or so from the throat that I thought was strange because it made the T-shirt look like a clerical collar.

I remember that my father hated the subscription cards stapled into every issue of The New Yorker (which at that time came in a brown paper wrapper).  He'd yank them all out before reading. Whereas I hated the loose slips that would just fall out while you read.  I remember we thought we hated the same things until we specified, and then it turned out that he didn't mind the slips I hated, because they came out easily and innocuously, and I didn't mind the stapled-in slips because they didn't fall out and bother you.