The only bad thing that ever happened, bike-wise, was the night my college roommate’s and my bikes were both dismantled and most of the parts stolen. We came out of our proofreading jobs, met up on the corner, and found our bikes half missing.
When memories are fragmented or vague, I love to look up historical events to help create an accurate timeline. And I’m not sure there’s any boundary at all between memory and imagination.
I met Colleen at Dani’s house, when I showed up to find them drawing at Dani’s dining room table. Hunched and curled lefthandedly over a sketch pad, Colleen turned only her head to gaze straight at me for a moment, unsmiling, as I sat down.
I was attracted by the book description: “a ‘secret journal’ … written during the most difficult period of his life.”
A woman who is 32 told the story of losing her mom as a child and her father’s remarriage to a woman who eventually triggered family fights. The little girl, then in middle school, discovered Harriet the Spy (via the movie), totally related to this character, and found her to be a powerful hero, AND was obsessed with her tape recorder.
I always prick up my ears when someone talks about losing a parent during childhood. I think this is the first time I’ve heard someone explicitly say he isolated himself. He had also been bullied. He didn’t say a lot about feeling isolated, and he didn’t describe “holing up” as self-protection, but still I felt I could relate.