Do your kids hate haircuts, I asked the stylist who trims and dyes* my hair every six weeks.They did, she said. Why is that? I thought hating haircuts as a kid had to do with going some place dull, sitting still and then being made to look ridiculous. If your mom is this totally cool, very gifted haircutter (don't judge her work by my mess of a head), why wouldn't you love it? Back in the day, Baltimore kids got their hair cut at the barber shops attached to local Hess Shoe stores, where squirrel Read more [...]

When I was 21 and jumping up and down in the fashion of the day to the punk version of "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" as performed by the Swingers, or going to see the Ramones multiple times . . . When I was 23 and danced every minute that the Fabulous Thunderbirds played at the annual LULAC fundraiser in Waco, losing almost five pounds in water weight, so that I had to buy a giant Butterfinger just to have the strength to drive home . . . When I went to West Fest just to see Brave Combo, the "nuclear Read more [...]

My childhood dentist, John Martielli, had an office above a five-and-a-dime -- or was it a grocery? -- in the Woodlawn section of Baltimore. We went twice a year. I climbed the staircase, hoping against hope I wouldn't have cavities. Over the course of my childhood, I must have had six-eight and each one left me with the feeling that I had been stamped UNCLEAN. (My sister seldom had cavities.) There was always a debate about who got to go first; we Lippmans were big believers in getting unpleasant Read more [...]

At Northwestern University, the history department was quite good and there were several professors who had famous lectures. Wiebe -- did I really summon that name from my memory banks? -- performed a 19th century melodrama that was intended to showcase, um, I'm no longer sure. Family relations? Henry Binford did ice cream. Evanston, after all, was home of the ice cream sundae, a WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union) alternative to those sinful, fizzy sodas. And IIRC (the Memory Project's official Read more [...]

It was seventh grade and I can see the dimpled, clownish face of the boy who brought the book, but I can't recall his name. He read the section where Johnny Fontaine's actress wife came home from a night of adultery and Johnny couldn't even bring himself to hit her in the face. I think the line that moved us to awed silence was "Johnny never fucked me." I was already quite the dirty-book specialist, but this was a DIRTY BOOK. I bided my time, knowing it would come into my hands eventually.Strangely, Read more [...]

Here's the tough trick about adulthood for me -- divided loyalties. I want everyone I love to love one another. And when I dislike someone, I want those who love me to dislike that person, too. Which means that I should dislike anyone disliked by those I love. Talk about ignorant armies clashing by night.It's just not possible. So I've turned it around, accepted F.Scott Fitzgerald's dictum about the first-rate mind's ability to hold two conflicting thoughts, and learned to understand that someone Read more [...]

I thought I might need a heating pad, but was reminded in the drugstore yesterday that technology marches on -- BenGay patches, these one-time-use thingies that wrap around the afflicted area with the help of velcro. Oh brave new world, etc.Still, I felt wistful for the heating pad we had when I was a child. I think it was used for mild earaches because I didn't have a lot of other aches as a kid. That treatment has probably gone out of fashion, along with taking Coca-Cola syrup for an upset stomach. Read more [...]