Confessions

I have never read The Giver. It’s one of those books people assume you have read. I’ve spent the last 30 years pretending that I have. I’m not sure why I don’t just suck it up and read this YA novel – it would probably take an hour or so. But pretending has become a secret part of my literary identity…

One year for Hanukkah my mom got my brother and me an electrical “massager” from Sharper Image. I think I was 13. This was a very strange gift, and one can only surmise what my mother needed a “massager” for…I discovered a secret about this “massager” one day by accident in my mother’s bed and spent the next year sneaking this bulky contraption out of the medicine cabinet and into my mother’s bed where the plug was. I’m really, really hoping my mom was not doing the same thing with it…

I still sometimes just let the faucet run after I pee so that it sounds like I’m washing my hands, but I don’t actually have to get them wet…

When I was probably 7 or 8 years old, Sarah and I practiced kissing through a plaid napkin in my play kitchen in the basement. I have never told anyone about this.