Mother was right
Bell, Robert H.
Mother was right about my Permanent Record These weeds are memories of those worser hours, I prithee put them off. Cordelia, in King Lear "How many of us would like to have everything we did...
...My grandmother believes that if you sleep around, you'll die of some dread disease...
...Well, 1 regret to say that 1 rejected Mom's sound advice: 1 hope my youthful indiscretion won't come back to haunt me...
...ROBLRT H. BELL Robert H. Bell teaches English at Williams College and is a frequent contributor w Commonweal...
...Books by Franz Fanon, Camus, F.ldridge Cleaver...
...730: Commonweal...
...And you don't want it written that you were the kind of guy who broke his lease...
...Let It Bleed...
...A bearded law student greeted me, "Hey man, have a hit off of this...
...Doug...
...Seedy furniture...
...Posters of Ho Chi Minh, Bonnie and Clyde, and W.C...
...Not that this danger was always used to frighten me...
...Because 1 was such a hip-looking dude in my engineer boots, work shin, and Mao cap, people were always offering me mind-altering contraband substances...
...When, as graduate students, my wife and I finally found a decent place to live near Harvard Square...
...You know...
...Then Doug got serious...
...even Supreme Court Justices...
...One October evening in 1970 we had a housewarming party, to celebrate finding that new place to live...
...Mom discouraged us from breaking the lease on our wretched apartment...
...I replied...
...Crosby Stills and Nash, Blonde on Blonde...
...Bill Bennett was arguing that Paul was barefoot on the cover of Abbey Road because that was a Jain burial custom...
...Fields...
...You'll get caught, and it ' will end up on your permanent record...
...et al...
...I am certainly glad I listened to her when she warned me never to try marijuana, the weed with roots in hell...
...Feed your head...
...Overall, Mom clearly fell that her son was putting together a pretty impressive Permanent Record...
...Walsh, complained that I made wisecracks during airraid drills...
...Cordelia, in King Lear "How many of us would like to have everything we did when we were younger put on the books...
...Then grass will be legal...
...Tolkein, Allen Ginsburg...
...My mother always had a firm belief in The Permanent Record...
...Mom feared that Mrs...
...Our prize possession, a K.LH 320, was playing our generation's permanent records: Sergeant Pepper...
...Walsh might put on my Permanent Record that 1 wasn't college material...
...I also regret to say that no one has yet written about me except me...
...But if anyone — a biographer or an FBI agent — does write about me, he or she will find that my mistake in breaking the lease was a rare lapse from a very high standard...
...Everybody but Bill Bennett burst out laughing...
...C'mon...
...Thanks anyway, Doug," I insisted, "I wouldn't want it to wind up on my permanent record...
...my life is an open book...
...In twenty years people in this room will all be in powerful positions: prosecuting attorneys, DA's...
...When my first grade teacher, Mrs...
...Bob, you're the kind of guy someone is going to write a book about...
...President Reagan, defending Douglas H. Ginsburg, erstwhile nominee to the Supreme Court...
...I hanks to my Mom...
...It was a typical Cambridge pad...
...People will joke about marijuana laws the way we joke about Prohibition...
...No thanks...
...Those old folks have some pretty strange ideas...
...Remember what the dormouse said...
...An anecdote shows exactly what kind of guy 1 was...
...You have to remember that the sixties were cra/\ times, when young people didn't always listen to their parents...
...You're probably right, Doug...
Vol. 114 • December 1987 • No. 22
