I remember being surprised and disconcerted when it turned out that the title of the Sly and the Family Stone song I loved was: "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)."  I remember wondering how much it mattered that I'd misheard it.

 I remember how obsessed I was with James Fenimore Cooper.  We had to read Last of the Mohicans over the summer for the start of school, when I was 10 or 12.  I loved it.  So I read all of the Natty Bumppo Leatherstocking Tales.  But it was The Pathfinder and Last of the Mohicans that I liked most: Natty Bumppo in his prime.  The Pioneers was still pretty good, especially when he intentionally only nicks that potato that is part of the skeet-shooting competition, to preserve his reputation (he did hit it), but to allow the young man to win (and impress the woman he's in love with).  I hated that he dies in The Prairie.  I remember distinguishing between the Mohicans (or the Lenni Lenape in general) and the cruel Mohawks.  And I remember embracing, in sheer ignorance, Cooper's contempt for Jane Austen -- I remember he'd been reading Austen aloud to his wife and flung the book from himself with contempt, since he could do better.  And then he wrote The Last of the Mohicans first, to demonstrate that.  So it took me a while -- till twelfth grade I think -- to read Austen, and to discover, to my vestigial surprise, how great she was.