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though the formative dynamic was mostly reactive. I think about them often. My wife says I am obsessed with nostalgia for my troubled adolescent past.

but they prided themselves on having seen through the external faults that had relegated us to C lists. ''You don't need to buy the 50's in a store

maudlin nostalgia sets in and he begins to run

all right. They were years of self-doubt

and the girls had established a committee of three to which the boys had to apply for dates. I had my eye on a pretty blonde from an adjoining neighborhood (her distance

'' one of the guys - who used to talk with a high voice - confided. Suddenly

where we once had gone to summer camp or worked as waiters. The guys played one-on-one basketball and horse (even those who hated hoop as kids). We told jokes so old you could give them numbers (itself one of the oldest jokes). And we wonde...

overpriced miniature jukeboxes that play ''Rock Around the Clock

400 to go to college. (I put the money in an interest bearing account that paid for my first year at law school.) The state scholarship was based entirely on a single

but fortunately there was also a test that an applicant with non-qualifying grades could take. Unfortunately

Yitz’s faith in me led to consider college. My father thought I should go to work and take some classes at night

when an authority figure—the camp dramatics counselor

because there was so little worth remembering. We would be given a quarter to memorize passages from holy texts and a dollar if we could recite “by heart” (what does that mean?) an entire chapter from the Bible. Only once did my memory serv...

my memory for obscure facts and the “parlor tricks” I played with it got me an interview with the producers of a television game show called “The $64

I impressed my children at Steve’s ice cream shop in Cambridge

I discovered that I had inherited my mother’s extraordinary gift while participating in intercollegiate debates. The debate tournaments always took place on Saturday. I pleaded with my parents to let me go

some of my more ""proper"" students objected to my constant interruptions

” she would say about my extremely polite Aunt (by marriage

directness was more of a virtue than politeness

because my academic performance was abysmal. In my senior semester my first half grades were as follows (I still have the report card): English 80; Math 60 (F); Hebrew 65; History 65; Physics 60 (F). With two failing grades