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Howard Skolnick’s Sister | Feb 20 2002

I recently remembered something I’d forgotten. Only, is the word forgotten? The word is, hadn’t thought about in a long time. Because who can keep everything in their head all at once? No one. Only one thing fits in there at a time, and all the rest… well, I’m picturing a room with stuff everywhere. That stuff is the stuff that is at hand in one’s head, the stuff one doesn’t necessarily ever think about but is always there. Such as one’s name, I suppose. Although, yes, people do sometimes forget their names, which means that one’s name must be remembered just like everything else. Still, to remember one’s own name seems different from remembering, say, the big rock in Howard Skolnick’s backyard.

That rock is a good example of what I mean, because I don’t think I’ve thought about it in twenty years. And it was big—about the size of a buffalo, if a buffalo kept its legs folded under, which isn’t something that buffalo’s ever do, I imagine. What’s interesting is how I found it. I found it by “traveling” around my childhood street, going from house to house and looking for something that one remembers differently than one’s name—an example of that. Various things appeared, but none quite as apt as the rock in Howard Skolnick’s backyard.

It was impressive, that rock. Not merely because of its size, but because it was there. No one else had a rock in their backyard, which to me indicates that it must have posed a problem for the people who developed the land that became my block. Because I have trouble believing that that rock was the only rock around, in the beginning. No, I suspect that rocks abounded, in the beginning, but that the developers managed to dig up all the other ones. This rock, though, could not be dug up, or they deemed it unwise to try, and so it remained.

Notably, I don’t remember ever thinking about the rock at the time. It was just here and had always been there, so what was there to think about it?

One’s name is like this, I suppose. As are all the other things in the “room.” They’re just there and don’t need to be hunted down or even thought about much. Which frees up resources for the remembering-the-rock kind of remembering.

This reminds me that I’ve now forgotten the thing that sparked this piece, the thing I recently remembered. I do remember remembering it, though. When it came to me, I thought, This is something I haven’t thought about in a long time. And in characteristic fashion, I pondered what other such things I’ve forgotten—or rather, not thought about in a long time — a paradoxical task. Well, maybe not so paradoxical, but daunting.

For it seems that there are a million things that I could possibly be thinking about now. I mean, from the past. Yes, even if I limited it to things that resembled a buffalo, I’m sure I’d be here all night, remembering.

And then forgetting. Or not forgetting (I keep making that mistake), but thinking about other things instead.

Such as Howard Skolnick’s sister. For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of Howard Skolnick’s sister, nor even what she looked like. Did she look like a female version of Howard Skolnick? I can’t remember. And as is often the case in these cases, I wonder if she died and that I forgot. I’m not just saying this for effect: my mother corrected me recently when I spoke of her aunt, my great-aunt, in the present tense.

But getting back to Howard Skolnick’s sister, here’s the way it is in my head. I see Howard Skolnick’s basement door. I’m in the street outside his house and I’m looking at the basement door, which is open, I mean the outside one is, but there’s a second door inside it, a screen door, which is shut. So I’m looking at Howard Skolnick’s screen door, which is white with a big section in the top half for the screen, and through the screen I see Howard Skolnick’s basement, which I can barely see because it’s so dark in there, and I’m thinking about Howard Skolnick’s sister, I’m standing in the street and I’m thinking about Howard Skolnick’s sister and I’m looking into his basement, which is dark, and so for this reason I have the sense, this is me now, me in the present, that something bad happened to her.