Ten Childhood Memories, or Life as We Know It Is Rather Complex.

I am amazed I can remember them at all, since I often forget what day it is.

I remember waking up on my 8th birthday to the sounds of "Happy Birthday To You" playing on a brand new portable red and white record player my parents had bought for me. They had quietly come into my room, set up the little player (remember record players and "little golden records"?) and played the song to start my birthday. My parents never looked so beautiful or beaming as that beautiful sunny morning.

Later, my brother gave me a "Flash Gordon" flashlight. (when you are 8, that's a big deal).

I had that record player for the next 6 years until it literally fell apart from use. By then it was time for "stereo" anyway.

When I was in fourth grade, I wanted to sing in the church choir. They would not allow anyone under the sixth grade to be a member, but I wanted it so badly! I knew all the hymns and music they sang by heart and nagged my father about this for weeks. He finally arranged for the choirmaster to "audition me."

One Sunday morning, before church, my father brought me into the choir rehearsal room (the most inner sanctum for an aspiring choir boy) and there, before the entire choir of children and adults, the choirmaster asked me to sing a well known hymn.

Before he even began playing the piano, I started singing. I sang on perfect pitch, and in tempo. However, I was an octave higher than the normal soprano voice! I easily was able to hit high C! In fact, I could probably have shattered glass.

The entire choir applauded me and I sang in the choir that Sunday, and every Sunday after that. They called me "Super Soprano" because I could sing higher than anyone in the choir. My voice often became the lead.

Puberty put and end to that.

When I was five, I attended parochial "pre-school" in a large school in mid-Manhattan, New York.

For Halloween, they held a costume contest and sent notes to the parents to have their children ready by a certain date. My mother thought this was an absolutely fascinating idea and asked me what I wanted to "be".

I said "A robot!". She looked at me and said "No, no robots! You will be the Emperor Nero!" (How she ever got that idea is beyond me).

She spent the next several days making a toga costume for me, from -- what else -- a bed sheet that she painstakingly gold border painted with the Greek Key design (which was historically, not very accurate. But I was five, what did I know?)

It took her days to get this project together for me. She got a plastic laurel wreath and made a golden crown for my head, bought some cheap sandals and painted them gold, and then looked everywhere and finally found a plastic fiddle at a toy store for me to play. The thing actually had a bow and strings on it, was tune-able, and I spent hours learning to squeak out "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on the thing.

Came the day of the contest, my teacher had to dress me in my rather elaborate costume. My mother sent me to school with a note.

The teacher said, "You are the only child I know who comes with a set of instructions!"

At a large assembly in the school auditorium, all of the young children paraded around in their costumes. We were arranged by size, and I was at the end because I was positively tiny for my age.

There was the usual assortment of ghosts, witches, cowboys, spacemen, vampires, Frankensteins, and at the very end, in came little tiny me dressed as -- the Emperor of Rome!

Needless to say, I was the most unusual character and won first prize. After the laughter and applause at the sight of me died down, I was interviewed by the Mother Superior in front of the entire assembly.

She asked me, "Who are you supposed to be?" and beamed a big grin at the crowd (she knew how to play an audience.)

I answered confidently (because my mother had prepped me), "I am great Nero, Emperor of Rome. I fiddle while the city burns!", and then squeaked out "Twinkle, Twinkle" on my little fiddle to prove the point.

The room burst into laughter and the Mother Superior, not about to be upstaged, said, "Well, I hope you aren't going to burn down the school!"

I replied "Oh, no, the Christians will do that!"

My prize was a set of little angel ornaments and six weeks in remedial religion class.

My mother was banned from ever helping me with a school project again.

When I was 12, I wanted a bicycle for my birthday. I was short for my age (a source of endless consternation to many -- like I could do anything about it?) and bicycles were expensive.

Although he didn't have a lot of money to spare, my father took me to a store to pick out a bike. The only bike my father could afford was the wrong size for me, being too big and meant for an adult.

Still, he bought it and we took it home. To his great annoyance, he had to put it together -- not an easy task with several excited children wanting to "help".

The more he tried to follow the very unclear instructions, the more frustrated and confused he became, but he finally got the thing together and I rushed outside with my older brother and the bike in tow.

It was so large that the only way I could get on it was to take a running jump into the saddle and then pedal as hard as I could to get up enough speed to manage my balance. I literally had to jump off and run along side to stop it.

I had seen this trick done by rodeo cowboys -- and horse, or bike, it worked. (and they say TV isn't educational!)

I was riding around and getting used to the completely unwieldy bike when suddenly, I had no steering! The handlebars turned, but the front wheel didn't! And I was headed straight for a brick wall, which I encountered with prodigious speed and force!

I almost castrated myself on the main frame bar (that they put on some bikes) and was screaming in pain.

My brother and his friends saw the entire accident and thought it was incredible. "Do that again, it was fantastic!"

In no time though, they knew I was hurt and helped me limp home. The bike was bent and seemingly ruined.

My father was furious and yelled at me for being so clumsy, until my brother, looking at the instructions asked "Did you use the lock nut on the handle bars, or a regular one?"

"What's the difference?" My father bellowed.

You can figure that one out.

The next day, I figured out how to fix the bike myself (my father disowned any responsibility for it and vowed never to buy me anything again). Working with my brother, we went through the instructions and re-built and unbent the thing, and it worked again.

I still had to take running jumps to get on and off the bike, and to be frank, it wasn't my favorite mode of transport.

Three weeks later, someone stole it. I never saw it again.

My father never bought me another bike.

When I was taking Spanish in high school, there was an all-school contest for students of French and Spanish. Participants were to study the cultures of French and Spanish speaking nations and make a project to celebrate them. The first prize was a trip to a famous city in France and/or Spain (this was a big-deal contest!)

I had read an illustrated article in LIFE magazine (remember that?) about the very modern city of Brasilia. The U.N. Headquarters in New York was one of my favorite buildings, and it was designed by the same architect. I loved modern architecture and though this would make a spiffy project!

I decided to build a model of the entire city, which later got pared down to some of the more prominent buildings - as I discovered that the city was a lot larger than the article had suggested. My model included the government center, the main plaza offices, and the grand cathedral.

I spent weeks reading up on the city of Brasilia at the library (remember those?) and building this model, making it from balsa wood and mounting it on a 4' x 4' plywood platform. I even put little electric lights in it (as used in model railroads). It looked wonderful - to a 13 year old anyway!

Came the day to bring my project to school, we discovered two things:

1. It wouldn't fit through the door.

2. It wouldn't fit in the car!

My father came to the rescue. We found a way to remove the taller buildings from the model temporarily so we could get the thing out of the house on an angle (I had to reassemble it at school).

He managed to borrow a pickup truck for the day to take me to school with the project (it's amazing what some parents will do to help their kids!)

We got to school and I set up my project. The teachers were impressed, the students were impressed. It was on display at the school for two days, then moved to the contest site.

Have you figured out the flaw in this plan yet? No, they had no trouble getting it to the contest site - that's not it. Read on...

The contest was held in a large library in a major school. It had some beautiful projects from all over the city. Lots of talent. I was especially impressed by a model guillotine that actually worked (such things impress adolescent boys).

Then came the judging and I was immediately and rather indignantly disqualified.

When I asked why, the answer was simple. "What is the national language of Brazil?"

It isn't Spanish, it's Portuguese. Although many Brazilians speak Spanish, of course.

The most praise I got was: "Nice try, and the lights are a nice touch."

The first prize winner was a student who built a Aztec Sun Mask entirely out of hard candy. It was highly detailed and actually quite beautiful. But I felt cheated.

The Aztecs never spoke Spanish, in fact, the Conquistadors wiped them out!

So much for school contests based on cultural understanding.

Although at college age one can't really claim childhood, this is an interesting story.

I had a girlfriend who spoke five languages. She was pretty and smart and became an exchange student to Spain, the University of Madrid. This was when Franco was dictator. The Spanish stamps of the time had his picture on them.

My girlfriend and I wrote lengthy correspondence back and forth. One letter almost didn't make it.

She had written the letter and then on the envelope wrote the word "ugly" next to the stamp with Franco's picture.

The postal officials refused to process the letter untill she removed the word: "ugly".

Guess she learned about the benefits of democracy the hard way!

When I was in high school, I joined the "Glee Club". This was the high school chorus, and I loved singing. By this time, puberty had set in and turned me into a first-tenor.

We had concerts twice every year, one in winter and one in spring. I would practice singing at home in the shower. Several times, neighbors phoned in to complain about the noise.

But I kept on singing.

The touching part of this story?

For the entire four years (8 concerts) my father attended every single one.

The drawback?

He fell asleep in every single one and his snoring was so loud, he could drown out the chorus!

Even today I can remember singing, "Maa-aag- nif-i-cat, Ah - nee - mah Me-ah..." and hearing: "ZZZZZZ -- snork -- sputter."

In spite of his faults (a rather short temper and uncanny ability to sleep through musical concerts) my father was a highly intelligent and cultured man.

One of his favorite "haunts" was the library. While some other fathers might have hung out in bars, my father could be found in the public library reading anything he could find. I believe he may have read every book in our local branch! He had an incredible memory and could recite many epic poems entirely by heart, including the "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner"! He knew Shakespeare and Ovid - well, not personally.

One day when I was 13, we were watching TV and they showed the original 1930's print of "Dracula", starring Bela Lugosi. I was much more impressed by the musical soundtrack than the film and asked my father what the tune was.

He told me it came from Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake." I said it was beautiful, and how could I hear it on record? He looked at me with a wink and said, "Come with me on Saturday, I have a surprise for you."

I wasn't sure if he was going to take me to meet a vampire or what, but that Saturday we went together into the heart of Manhattan to the "Donnel" branch of the public library. The "Donnel" branch at the time had the city's largest lending library of recorded music, only to be eclipsed when Lincoln Center opened years later.

My father took me to the music department, introduced me to the librarian and said "He wants to hear 'Swan Lake'. She smiled and said "I have just the thing."

She showed me the card catalogue and how to use it, and I was astounded, not only to find so much music, but that I could borrow it!

I spent the next several hours in the music department listening to Swan Lake and other works of Tchaikovsky while my father read his books and took notes (I never knew what he was taking notes about. No one ever did. They died with him.)

That was really the start of my classical music education. Many years later, by the time I had graduated from college (with a degree in musicology - no surprise there!), I had borrowed and listened to almost every record in the library collection.

An appreciation of classical music -- and the public library -- was the greatest gift my father ever gave me. It has lasted a lifetime.

Cats and christmas trees are a dangerous combination, as my father found out one fateful holiday season.

"Mew" was our pet cat. She was a nasty thing, very self-centered, who did not like to be touched, picked up, or interfered with in any way. She had no tolerance for children. She had the claws, and I have the scars, to prove it!

She had a mind of her own, and only my father could control her until...

Every Christmas when I was a child, we would go on the "great christmas tree" hunt. In New York City, this can be quite the adventure.

My mother had very definite ideas of what we were to have for a decoration, and she was very picky. So our hunt often ended in an argument between my father and mother as they spent hours picking out a tree while my brother and I played "Forest", and ran around the christmas tree lot pretending to be bears.

To fortify themselves for the adventure, my mother and father would have a "cocktail" before the grand trek. This particular season, they had more than was wise (warning, NEVER drink and shop at the same time -- you'll be amazed what you come home with!)

By the time all the arguing and haggling was over, we wound up with a ten foot christmas tree that was 6 feet in diameter and couldn't possibly fit into the apartment.

My father had a bad temper, and fortified with some booze, this really got the best of him. He was no craftsman, and the only "saw" we had was a kitchen utensil for cutting meat bones. To him, a "saw is a saw", and wielding his mighty saw, my father spent an hour trying to hack the top off this poor tree (which presumably was still somewhat alive). I believe he finally tore it off with his bare hands (how utterly barbaric!)

Finally, he got the tree into the apartment where, after rearranging the furniture so the thing would fit in the living room, he got it set up in a wobbly stand. Of course, my parents then rewarded themselves with another round of drinks.

He thought his job was done and he could take a rest, but noooo.

Mother had decided that we should now sing (or slur, in her case) Christmas carols and decorate the tree immediately.

My brother and I were kids, and this meant we could stay up late. We thought it was a grand idea.

So we all set about decorating this enormous monstrosity of a tree and came the final touch - angel hair!

Now in those days, "angle hair" was made from fiberglass, which you didn't dare get on you because it could cut you and create tremendous itching, rashes and a host of other problems (product safety, what's that?)

Carefully, my father arranged the angel hair -- under my mother's direction (by this time, she was so plastered that she couldn't stand straight, so she directed from a chair.)

At last the great project was done.

Next, of course, we needed a picture of the grand effort. So, my father got the camera and while he was adjusting the focus, our cat, Mew -- who'd been watching the entire affair from under the couch -- decided the tree was the greatest present she had ever seen and made a mad dash for it, up the trunk to the very top.

Naturally, this ruined the balance of the tree in the wobbly stand, and it came crashing down, along with a screaming cat with all claws exposed, on my poor father in a great BANG.

Smashed glass ornaments, tearing fiberglass and a short-circuiting light set were the result, all on my poor father, who by now was underneath it writhing on the floor!

I believe his screams were heard all the way to New Jersey.

Being smart, Mew took off and was not seen again for several hours. My poor father was bleeding (and miraculously not electrocuted because many of the bulbs simply exploded, stopping the flow of current). My mother tried to help bandage him up and disinfect his bleeding wounds with rubbing alcohol.

His screams were then heard in Pennsylvania.

We had very sober Christmas seasons every year after that, and Mew, until she died (many years later) always spent the holidays confined to our bedroom. Being a smart, if nasty cat, she had no problems complying.

Although this event didn't occur in "childhood", it is a fine way to end this article.

When I was in college, I studied "Fortran Programming" as part of a computer science course. This was long before the birth of the PC. In those days, computers still took up entire air conditioned rooms. The fact that the school did not actually have a computer didn't help much.

I had never before actually seen a real computer - and we were only able to "borrow time" from the large NYU computer lab -- three one-hour sessions, for the term! Much of what I learned was pretty imaginary.

My term project was to program a computer game of Tic-Tac-Toe for an IBM business computer with a line printer. And yes, it was all done on punch cards.

I was successful, somewhat.

In MY game, the computer lost every round.

Later my teacher asked me a rather important question:

"Do you even know how to win at a game of Tic Tac Toe?"

I admitted, I did not, and had never won a game in my life.

He said, "Oh, I think I see the source of the difficulty. Still, you did manage to program the computer to be as inept as you are. That's definitely worth a B."

I was hooked, and I wanted to take the follow-up course.

When I showed my father my schedule of classes to get his signature (which in those days was required), he saw I had signed up for the next computer science course. He refused to sign it.

"I don't want you studying computer's. There's no future in it."

I never did take that second course in computer science. I majored in music instead and graduated "Cum Laude."

In the 1980's, I attended graduate school, and there I DID learn all about computers! And in 1998, I tied them to music and created my first computer managed neoclassical music album performed on a synthesizer: "Symphonia Felina and Other Mewsical Masterworks".

It is still available for sale, and you can hear samples at ClydeSight2.0! - the Fun and Games Cat Site.

(See links at bottom of article)