Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind.
-- Virginia Woolf,
Orlando
the first time i became aware of socio-economic difference (in grade six, when i realized that i went to a private school and that fees for new immigrants were subsidized by the Jewish community--but that my rich classmates, judging by their blank faces, had never known such need)
the first (and only time) i've been called the equivalent of "a dirty Jew" (by a Russian on ICQ messenger--for having declined, i think, to send a photo)
the time i became hyper-aware of my own pretense (the day of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, which meant nothing to me, but which, i felt, should have--and which earned a solemn entry in my diary)
the first time i disappointed an adult who was not one of my parents (my high school English/literature teacher, who couldn't control her face when her model student told her she was going to university for computer science)
the time i became aware of having been bullied (in adulthood, while wondering about my discomfort regarding a certain classmate)
the time i felt the needle's sting (not more than a few months ago, upon learning that my sister had no memory of something that had always stood out to me--judging by her reaction at the time--as a moment of great selfishness on my part and of great disappointment on hers)
