Is it possible to warn children to use their lovely sponge brains carefully? To tell them -- this is it, this is what you will remember, these are the things that will crowd out your adult attempts to gather SERIOUS THINGS into your brittle gray matter? For a lot of boys, it's baseball and popular music; don't get me started on how these two things have been fetishized to High Seriousness. ("Ask me what's on the B-Side," Shrevie says in DINER. His wife stares in confusion; his best friend just does Read more [...]

I should probably save this for the July letter on my website -- June is done, by the by, aren't I the eternal grade-grubbind nerd -- but it's on my mind this dismal rainy afternoon. Plus, I've noticed that the folks who frequent these parts seem to like memes, no matter how ancient.A few weeks back in the blogosphere (yes, this is equivalent to "A long time ago, in a galaxy far away . . . ") people started listing movies they could watch over and over. I first saw it on Victor Gischler's excellent Read more [...]

Here's a story about where a single memory can take you.I was playing radio roulette and I hit the country station in the middle of SHeDaisy's "Little Goodbyes." In the song, the clearly disgruntled girlfriend brags that she "left the litter and took the cat." This actually happened to someone I know, at least 15 years before this song was on the radio. His wife called him at work and told him to come to the airport if he wanted to dissuade her from leaving. He headed to the airport. She, meanwhile, Read more [...]

Checking through the archives, I've noticed that food is most likely to get others here to write about their memories.I just spent 10 weeks on something we called "the Edgar Initiative" because if someone says the word "diet" in front of me I insert my head into a bag of chocolate peanut clusters from Eddie's and refuse to come up for air. So here's what I've had since I hung the dress up in the back of my closet. Not that I plan never to fit into it again, just that I plan to have a little fun for Read more [...]

Today was my last class at Goucher. I still have grades to submit (and several final papers to read), but it had the sweet finality I remember from other last-days-of-school. So, here we are. Again. But instead of writing about my last-day-of-school, I'm going to cut-and-paste here the story about George Slade, written in my last year at The Sun. I had met George on a previous story and he dearly wanted to be quoted, but he just didn't fit. Later, I could have kicked myself. He was 9! All he wanted Read more [...]

The Old Hag (www.theoldhag.com) refused to pass this meme to me, on the grounds that I was too well-dressed. Unfair! So I'm taking it anyway. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be? So I have to memorize a book? Then it's Lolita. But if I'm living in a book, I want it to be one of the later Oz books, probably Glinda of Oz, or an Edward Eager, either Half Magic or Seven Day Magic.Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?Joe Willard (Betsy-Tacy) and Jules of All-of-A-Kind Read more [...]

First, let's get the "Dickey" stuff out of the way. I grew up in Dickeyville, a former mill village on the banks of the Gwynn's Falls, where the Dickey family had once run the mill. I went to Dickey Hill Elementary School. I've heard all the jokes, as have the kids from Cockeysville. Get over it.When I was in second or third grade, the school started a spring book fair. A mimeographed sheet of titles would be distributed and students were expected to make a shopping list before they were admitted Read more [...]