I Wish I Could Remember You

Women are better than men at remembering people. I learned this last night, when I took a time travel train back 35 years to my days at summer camp in Vermont. The reunion took place at Kevin St. James, on 8th Ave in Hell’s Kitchen NYC. The bar was lively and I got there early. Next to me at the bar sat two pretty young ladies and four men. They were drinking Jagermeister shots and loudly toasting, and later the girls danced suggestively with one another.

The party was upstairs, and the turnout was impressive–more than 100 people whose roots went back to 1969. We wore nametags stating the years we were at camp, mine said 1969-73. The women I met at the party who did know me, I couldn’t recall at all, and when I ran into the one girl that I remember having a serious crush on, she drew a blank about me. I also caught up with Cookie Freeman, the first girl who ever kissed me ‘in the french style’ and I told her so.

Other men I spoke with there had the same foggy lack of recollection, and yet we all shared warm memories of the place we had summered those decades ago.