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you think you remember
Tuesday, August 21 2001
After eating an enormous dish of pasta Gretchen had made for me, I went up to Ernie's apartment on the fourth floor to join her in watching a women's basketball game on the satellite-dish equipped television there. The two teams were the New York Liberty (that's "us," the team Gretchen roots for) and the Miami Sol (they're a bunch of pædophilic Satan worshippers). "We" were ahead 20 points, so there wasn't much to worry about, but anything can happen in 15 minutes of game. Fully expecting to be bored by the game, I'd brought along the latest copy of The New Yorker and a glass of vodkatea. But a funny thing happened. Gretchen somehow managed to keep me interested in the game. Not only did she cheer involuntarily at every Liberty success and grumble at every Liberty failure, but she gave me lots of background on the individual players, enough to make feel something whenever they did something. I was mostly interested in their lives off the court: Debbie Black, the evil trailer trash mom who plays for the Sol; the tall dyke who tried to pick up one of Gretchen's friends at Henrietta's (a lezzie bar in the Village); and Vickie Johnson, the unsung hero of the Liberty who had once given Gretchen a towel at a game. "We" won, so Gretchen was in a fairly good mood for the rest of the evening.
Gretchen had been alarmed to learn that I'd eaten all the pasta she'd left for me, and she thought I should walk some of it off before going to bed. So she, Sally the Dog, and I went for a walk in Prospect Park. In one of the playgrounds we came upon a little red plastic ball with the markings of a lady bug, and we kicked it all the way home and into the bouse on the walk back, never once touching it with our hands. Sally showed no interest in it until we were indoors, whereupon she took it in her mouth and carried it around, wagging her tail.
Before falling asleep, Gretchen and I were talking about early childhood memories. We both wondered if we could even trust these memories, considering how completely different we were back when they were established. After all, a child doesn't even have the sophistication necessary to understand irony until puberty. And before a certain age, say two or three, our brains don't even bother preserving long-term memories. Evidently the things happening in our world at that age don't have enough context for memories to have any meaning. The best we can do at that age is get a handle on language and the rudiments of physics that we know of as "common sense."
Gretchen and I also talked about the basic human need for approval, a need that manifests even in babies who cannot speak. I told Gretchen about the fake laughter I'd seen John's baby nephew exhibiting the other night at the dinner table in an effort to engage people. That baby was being driven by the same urge that makes the class clown act out in study hall or unpleasant bubblegum popstars shake their booty.
Over the years we get a sense of who to target with which appeal for approval. We even occasionally make breakthroughs when approval is not received. When I was about seven, I told my father that I wanted to make a flashlight and all I needed was a battery, some wire, and a lightbulb. He scoffed at my idea, saying it wasn't practical or perhaps even that such a device would surely fail. He was right that it was impractical; it's easy enough to just buy a flashlight. But the point for me wasn't practicality, at least not at that age. It was about mastering how things work. The fact that I could build a flashlight in the manner predicted was vindication and gave me what I needed to critically view my father's technophobia. This was a watershed moment, freeing me to express my technical proclivities.
Sometimes, of course, it's best to avoid confrontations of this sort. I was only about four or five years old when I became selective about with whom I shared various information.
I told Gretchen about the fantasy dragons of my childhood, how I had all my little girlfriends convinced that real live dragons haunted our suburban neighborhood. I knew that these dragons didn't exist, but for some reason the group fantasy of their existence served my purposes. I feared, though, that one day someone would reveal that the dragons didn't exist, and I would be exposed as a fraud. For this reason I never told my parents or my brother anything about the dragons. I think news of the dragons did leak to my brother and for a time he worked actively to disabuse my friends of the dragon mythology. For him, and for my parents as well, there was nothing useful to be gained in believing in these dragons. My assumption of the inability of adults to "get" my dragons was so deeply engrained that I was set up for a real shock when Christen Denny's mother was leaked news of their "existence." I was amazed that she didn't scold me for deluding her daughter and the other children of the neighborhood. Instead, she wanted to know all about the dragons. Where did they live? Where do they go at night? How many are there? What should be done when they are encountered? I don't think I've experienced this sort of adult playfulness with fantasy since, with the exception of That Which Spawned Jessika.
What are some of your childhood memories? Why do you think you remember them?
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