Do You Remember School?

I have been thinking about memory these days, because I have been gathering contributions for Class Notes from my classmates at the Brearley School. Seven contributions have come in, either instantly or, after many weeks, reluctantly. They are long or short, emotional or matter-of-fact, describing adventures abroad or hard work at home, and now my job will be to cut and select, paraphrase and quote, and count words from each contributor—our entire collection will have to add up to no more than six hundred and fifty words. The hard part is trying to give more or less equal space to each of these life accounts, since some of us tend to recount incidents in great detail while others are tight-lipped. If nine of us altogether, including me and my co-agent, contribute notes, then each note is allowed a little over seventy words. If another contribution comes in at the last minute, we all go down to about sixty-five. Do I cut out the trip to Costa Rica, or the visit to the nephew in New Jersey? The recent grandchild, broken hip, or Scrabble competition? Why did I decide I would not mind being a class-notes agent? For the same two reasons, I suppose, that I pursue any piece of writing—since this, too, would be a kind of writing. First, I like the challenge of trying a new form. In this case, my task is to assemble and adjust, as much as necessary, the writings of a range of personalities to create one fairly coherent whole. The second reason is always emotional. I am drawn to a subject because I am moved by it—its humor or pathos, surprise, perversity, beauty, mystery, perhaps the oddity of a piece of overheard language. Here, one source of my emotion was the years-long experience of the school itself. I was also touched that my classmates suggested me for the job, their sensible reason being: “You’re a writer.” It is a role that places me well inside our small community, whereas I had always felt marginal when I was in school. I was a shy […]

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