Memory - Childhood

All my life, as I've moved in an agonized trance among you, I've heard you say "Joel, you have to consider other people's feelings. You have to consider other people's feelings."

This fanciful idea of California falling into the sea trumps the public interest over the reality of the flooding of our lowlands all over the world.

I never lived with a man such as they show in movies.

When I was young, Christmas was a day on which we spent some time outside on the back lawn.

Sheriff John came on at the noon hour. You could draw a picture and send it to him. And he'd put it on the air and tell people that you'd drawn it.

The theory I proposed was that two types of individuals came forward because of the publicity: those who actually suffered abuse and those who wanted the cachet of being a survivor

What evil things did your mother/father/brother/sister/other relation tell you?

The bright guy is still around, but he's moving around like Gumby. And Gumby's melting.

We had a tortoise who my brother named Mr. Hobbs. Like the many Californians, we just picked up our pet when he happened to cross the road near Devil's Punchbowl.

Vacations, I told my father, weren't for work.

If only he hadn't hit me. Not just that day, but many times before that.

I remember my first whiff of household ammonia.

At the beginning of 4th grade, my mother wondered who my teacher would be. "If it's Sister Annette again," I said, "I'm going to take out a gun and shoot her."

Mom told me that the only thing she'd paid for was a report card of straight As: $10. I got one once in my senior year in college. She made excuses and I received nothing.

My bedroom window faced north, due north, towards the mountains. I could be certain of the directions because my town was founded by Mormons looking for an outlet to the sea for their theocratic democracy of Deseret.

That's the spot. That's where you fell. You broke your arm on the sidewalk. You must tell that to Mom or else we'll both be in trouble.

Mom liked to sneak up on me and spray me with one of the sample bottles. "Now you smell like a girl," she'd sneer. And I know that she secretly feared that I'd become one.

Someone went around my home town of San Bernardino, California, carrying a stencil and a can of silver spray paint in about 1970.

"Daddy, did you kill anyone in the war?"

We looked back at Leonardo's model (I like the theory that it is Leonardo in drag) through the panel and looked towards the future through the same image.

Oh dear. I'm talking like a progressive again....how dare I attack the sacred cow of the so-called free market!

Dreams are a crazy salad of all kinds of things.