Suprise Me

There was a phone with buttons for hold and intercom, and a blocky computer console sitting squarely in the middle of the desk.  I think it was a Dell.  The font was clunky and there were no graphics.  This was my first computer.  Read More

Third Degree Burn Last year at about this time I  burned the top of my foot.  It was very painful and it looked pretty bad,  and so I went to see Dr A,  my dermatologist. He examined the wound and asked me how it had happened.   I was too embarrassed to tell him the… Read More

The Marvelettes had it right with “Please Mr. Postman.” Back in the pre-electronic days, waiting for the postman to come with the day’s mail was agonizing when you were hoping to hear from someone (“Is there a letter in your bag for me?”). If there was nothing it was such a letdown. (“So many days… Read More

Though he is five years my elder, my brother and I have always been close. He is super-smart and he did help me with some homework when I was a kid and looked to him for guidance. He left for Brandeis as I began 8th grade. My mother’s sisters predicted that I would flunk out… Read More

The flyer—featuring a jolly Santa and offering floor models, repossessions, and a choice of linings—was in spectacularly bad taste. Read More

Even as a youngster I wasn’t a big fan of formica. But, like so many kitchen tables in the 1960s, our family meals were served on a gray formica table. The formica looked to me like it was trying to be a modern art painting, even though I didn’t really know what modern art looked… Read More

"I spent much of my childhood as someone else." Read More

Skee Ball When I was a kid my grandparents lived a few blocks from the beach in Far Rockaway,  in Queens,  New York.   I loved visiting them  – and especially in the summer when Rockaways Playland was open for the season. Created in 1902 by roller coaster designer LaMarcus Adna Thompson,  Rockaways Playland had… Read More

I find myself walking into a room and saying "What did I come in here for?" This happens more often than I care to admit. Read More

Whatever high-pitched motor was driving me faded to a kind of thrum--something like my heartbeat.  Read More