My dad used to say, “You have a great memory. You can remember things that didn’t ever happen.” It was his way of keeping my imagination in check. I still have a tendency to exaggerate. Usually when I quote some kind of statistic with a number, my wife will say (behind her hand) “Divide everything he says by four,” to whomever is willing to listen.
But here’s my problem with remembering. It’s better in my head than it is in real life. For example, I could write a blow-by-blow account of what I was doing the day Richard Nixon resigned. But it wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining as what I remember thinking.
I followed the whole Watergate thing too closely for a kid my age—due to the mumps. The hearings were the only thing on television when I was stuck at home. From there, I developed a fascination with the story. I had a crush on John Dean’s wife. I equated G. Gordon Liddy with the devil. I thought Martha Mitchell was hilarious! And when it became possible to get a Sam Ervin wrist watch, I added it to my birthday gift list. Of course the whole thing dissolved with a week to go before my birthday so I think I settled for something stupid. (I often wonder how much that watch would be worth on eBay.)
So there you go … you have my entire fetish with the Nixon administration in a paragraph. It’s my fondness for these people that aroused my memory today. There I was, at the United Methodist Church Camp on Flathead Lake, a chubby 11-year old, watching the whole thing on a television they had smuggled into the sanctuary. It was an odd co-mingling of public and religious service. Everyone was thrilled to be watching television at camp.
I was crestfallen.
I remember one of the counselors sitting next to me and trying to console me. “Today is AWFUL!” I whined. “I want to go home!” I said, “I should be with my parents at a time like this,” I said. The counselor, I *think* his name as Kirby, but don’t quote me on that detail, said, “Today is today. And it’s not awful. This is a good thing. Nixon was a bad president,” he said. But I was sad for a different reason.
I wanted the story to continue. And Nixon took it away.
That bastard.