180: Return to Childhood 2001
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It was so long ago. Who can remember that far back? Two whole years. I remember all of the old things. We used to read the book "Harry Potter" when it first came out and we made curtains. "Harry Potter" curtains. And they have new curtains now. I look back at them and I'm like, "Wow, it's changed." I wish it was still there somehow. This is Katelyn Hernandez in seventh grade at the Pulaski School here in Chicago. She says that she actually visits her fifth grade classroom, room 211. And her fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Chan, fairly often. And reminisce is about the past. Recently I went through the shelves and our books are still there, like "Our America." You're talking about the book "Our America." Yeah. You know, reminiscing about when we used to read that book and how it showed lots of racism. Back in fifth grade, she covered her copy of the book with one of those paper book covers with a picture of NSYNC on it. It was her copy, though they're not allowed to write their name in the front of the books at her school. They had numbers and my number I think was like 30. So you did find book number 30? Yeah, I did. I saw the book and it was just there without its paperback cover. You know, everything that was mine is not mine anymore. I think, like, that's the hardest thing from switching to another grade, into another classroom, into another teacher. There's no environments and new and different things to learn. Well, old memory is to leave behind. 20 years from now, 30 years from now. When you try to remember back to seventh grade, what do you think you're going to remember from this year? Oh, I think I'll remember barely anything. Isn't that kind of strange, though, to think that you're going through all these experiences now, that somehow we're going to get wiped off the blackboard? Yeah, but I even have that experience now. Like, I can't remember things from, like, second grade. I see, like, some things. Like, I remember this kid, he wrote this Valentine card for me. It's like, you're pretty as a rose. I don't know, something like that. But, like, I can't remember teachers really well, like, I used to. Do you feel sad about that, or is that okay? I feel sad about that, because, you know, it's a part of me. It's like, you don't even remember what's happened. It's kind of hard, because it's been a part of you. ♪♪ When I asked Kayla, which friends that she wouldn't remember at all someday, it wasn't hard for her to answer. Cynthia, I'll probably forget Adilene. I'll probably forget Diana and Maria. I'll forget Erco Sordio. I'll forget a whole bunch of people. She's not close to these kids or anything, but as she said their names, it was like watching them vaporize or something. Someday they'd just be gone, erased from the history of her life, like they had never been there in the first place. We forget most of everything. And then, sometimes, we go back and try to remember. And really, there is no predicting which people and places and moments will be able to get back. Diana and Maria, they could still make the cut. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's this American life. I'm Ira Glass. Today in our program, return to childhood, what you find and what you do not find when you go back. Our show today in four acts, act one, once more with feeling, in which Jonathan Katz answers the age-old question. What happens if you return to your childhood home, and it's not so nice, and the current owner tries to sell it to you? Act two, punk in a great final suit, in which a mortgage broker discovers that his old punk band from the 70s is hot in Japan and decides to leave corporate life for a little bit and go back on tour. Act three, ish bean ein mop head. A 34-year-old man investigates who he was at nine years old and learns a thing or two that he would just as soon not remember. Act four, every day I forget something else, a ten-year-old explains memory with the help of novelist Nicholson Baker. Stay with us. Act one, once more with feeling. You may have heard of this series on Public Radio called Lost and Found Sound, which looks for old tapes to put on the radio.
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