As I got older, though, my mother stopped parading my memory. She stopped bragging about it or hitting her enemies with it. Instead, she started running it down. My memory had been the ultimate proof of any points that she wanted to make, but it strangely disproved any points of my own. I might remember some incident, sure, but I did not understand it. Anybody whose brain was so cluttered with dull trivia like the approximate number of ounces of toothpaste left in the tube didn’t actually know what things meant. My mother first exploited my memory, and then insulted it, but the conclusion I
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