1/4/98
DATE: Sunday, January  4, 1998              TAG: 9801070845 
 
              CHILDHOOD MEMORIES MAY NOT BE SHARED WITH PARENTS 
 
     Singing Auld Lang Syne must have caused us to break out in nostalgia, 
because when my son Peter called New Year's Day from Minnesota we found         
ourselves trading family memories. And it really was a trade, because we often 
don't remember the same things, or if we do we remember them differently. 
   First there was the episode of the frog wine.                                
   My husband and I were living in Switzerland in 1972, the year Peter was      
born, and we became fond of a Swiss wine called Fendant. So when we planned a 
Swiss-themed party we bought a couple of bottles. 
   I remember that much. What Peter remembers is that as we were leaving the    
store he asked ``Why are you buying that frog wine?''                           
   That bought him an outraged lecture on how we don't use derogatory ethnic 
terms, and when we ran low on indignation he said plaintively ``But it has a 
frog on the label!''                                                            
   Gulp. 
   He remembers the time I wouldn't take him to see 101 Dalmatians because he 
wouldn't eat his lima beans, and neither of us realized it was the last night 
it was showing in town. 
   He still doesn't eat lima beans. 
   We both remember reading J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. 
   ``We went to see The Hobbit at the Doubletree dinner theatre,'' Peter said,  
``and when we got home you read it to me. Then you said you had another book 
by the same author. You had a firm rule, you read me a section each night, 
sections were marked by three asterisks.'' 
   I remember that I offered him Lord of the Rings because I didn't have a 
copy of The Hobbit until much later. 
   Neither of us is sure how old Peter was then - probably in kindergarten -    
but he tried to fix the time. 
   ``We got to the part about Shelob when we were camping in the Rockies and 
the lantern caught fire.'' 
   I don't remember that. 
   ``We came to the end,'' Peter said, ``and I asked you to read it again and   
you said no, you can read it yourself. And I could, but I had a lot of trouble 
with the big words.'' 
   What I remember is that we'd finished the first two volumes and when we 
were about to start the third volume, Return of the King, Peter wasn't          
interested. I was very disappointed until he said ``I read that book 
already.'' 
   I didn't know he could read. 
   Neither did his teacher, apparently. 
   ``There were three reading groups,'' Peter said, ``red, and I was in the     
blue group, that was the middle, and there was one kid who could read really 
well and he was by himself in the yellow group. 
   ``We went through the reading books, and they were boring.'' 
   I can imagine that for a six-year-old who was into Tolkien, Cats and Mice 
would have been less than stimulating. 
   ``I wanted to buy some of the books they advertised in the Scholastic 
newsletter, and you said I wouldn't like them. And I didn't. They could use 
bigger words in the ads because they were aimed at parents.'' 
   The end of the Tolkien saga we both remember. 
   ``Near the end of the year,'' Peter recalls, ``we had to bring in our        
favorite books. I brought The Return of the King and they got mad at me until 
I could prove that I really could read it.'' 
   That's been one of my favorite stories for a long time. It continues a 
family tradition, because I got into trouble in kindergarten for reading the 
instructions to the teachers printed in very tiny type sideways along the 
inner margin of the worksheet pages. 
   I wonder whether Peter knows that story.                                     
   Peter, like his father, has a first initial but no first name. I don't       
think I ever heard about the third-grade art teacher who decided Peter's name 
really was Arnold and he just didn't want to admit it, but he says I had to 
write a note to the teacher to make her stop. 
   Strange how shared memories can be so different.