I Remember (and Don't Remember)

I remember...the experience of having genuine excitement about a profession, in my case as a four-year-old with civil engineering, or, as I called it, "a builder."

I remember...being ecstatic at the arrival of a new building book in the mail.

I don't remember...the supposed dinner routine of my sister and I at our old house in Franklin Park, Illinois. Apparently we would dance in the family room every night to Billy Joel's "52nd Street."

I don't remember...my Uncle Bud, who, this tiny anecdote will reveal, was a man of great compassion and insight: My father and his two brothers were attending the wedding of a distant cousin (probably for the food), and each one took notice of the unusually long hair the groom flaunted on the outskirts of his ill-fitting tuxedo. As the brothers strolled out of the cathedral, their Uncle Bud sneaked behind them and said, draping his arms around their shoulders, "Boys, if you ever grow your hair that long, I'll cut your balls off."

I don't remember...ever feeling economic despair while the middle class evaporated from American life.