In 2010 I played the audiotape for my adult children. They thought I sounded like my then college-age son Jack.\u00a0 My parents had asked me questions about my college roommates.<\/p>\n
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My mother said What\u2019s So-and-So from your dorm doing?<\/p>\n
Doing what<\/em>?\u00a0 I stonewalled my mom, like a good college kid.<\/p>\n My<\/strong><\/span> son Ted, listening to the tape in 2010, said, \u201cYou\u2019re weird, recording everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Weird?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Wired?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 You can never have too much documentation. (“This is the age of investigation and every citizen must investigate” — Ed Sanders.) For instance, I wish my mother had saved my dad’s letters from Fort Benning, 1941. \u00a0My mother threw nearly everything out.\u00a0 When she moved to assisted living, I cleaned out her apartment in about two hours.\u00a0 Two hours<\/em>, not days.<\/p>\n My audiotape is boring.\u00a0 \u201cI don’t want any dessert\u201d — that kind of thing. I hope somebody throws it out.\u00a0 Maybe I will.\u00a0 For one thing, there’s a horrible sax solo after the dinner recording, and I sound like a jerk — on sax and at dinner:<\/p>\n Dad:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 “What the hell you got it [tape recorder] on for?\u00a0 There’s nothing going on.”<\/p>\n Mom: “He likes to do it.”<\/p>\n Bert:\u00a0 “I don’t listen to them anyway, so what do I care.”<\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n I had an essay in Belt Magazine<\/em> last week.\u00a0 Belt<\/em> is online dispatches from the Rust Belt.\u00a0 “On Lee Road.”<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/memorabilia.jpg\" "\\"memorabilia\\"")
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