What conversation has stuck with you the longest?

I started going to a therapist to help me with a sticky relationship situation - torn between two lovers.  During one session, I said, "oh, wait, I know...I need to not be so nice...I've got to work on that."  The therapist said, "no, I want you to be exactly who you are.  If it makes you comfortable to be nice, go for it, own it, revel in it." 

Ahhhhh, permission to be nice - it was the most relieving thing he could have said!

 When I was three years old I remember laying on my red spread in my room I shared with my two other brothers.  For whatever reason I said to myself in my head "I am three".  I thought to myself that I will always remember this moment.  I can't recall anything special happening before of after the incident that would make it significant.  I just remember being alone in my room and saying to myself..."I am three".

On that note, "I am fourty three!"

When I was a teenager my central obsession was Einstein’s theory of relativity. I was astonished that Einstein’s bizarre, seemingly impossible predictions about time, space, and the speed of light had actually proven to be true, and dedicated myself to understanding how nature performed such an incredible trick. By the time I entered high school I was considering trying to become a physicist when I grew up just so that I could understand Einstein’s work as thoroughly as possible. I lived in a town where a NASA facility was located, and my father worked for a contractor that I vaguely suspected was involved with space and rocketry. I hoped he might know about what kinds of jobs physicists could do. So I asked him, “What kind of work can one do as a physicist?”

Several conversations immediately come to mind, but one feature they all shared for me was a profound period of silence: the silence of knowing that your argument has just caused a friend's perspective to shift, and you can see the wheels turning in his eyes as the parameters re-align; the brittle silence across a scarred kitchen table as you realize that your marriage was just murdered; the glowing silence between two people who can commune their contentment without words.

When I was 7 or 8 years old I used to be very fidgety and could not sit still. Nor did I ever want to go to the bathroom when I was having fun. I played t-ball at the time and I was placed in the outfield because I had a good arm. Whenever I had to go to the bathroom, I'd cross my legs, lean back and forth, turn around, jump up and down, grabbing and holding my penis, all sorts of gyrations. My Dad called it the "Doo-Doo Dance".

Now a "conversation" is usually two-way arrangement. I am certain that this one was. It is the reply which I remember to this day.

As a somewhat rambunctious teenager, I was pushing my points to try to win my way over parental controls. There had been some of this, and my father (who actually turned out to be quite a philosopher in his own way) had this to say: "Now, you know that this household is not a democracy. It is a little like a benevolent dictatorship. I do think that you deserve to be heard. I will listen. If I am convinced, then I might change my mind. If I am not convinced, then my decision prevails. Are we clear about that?"

I was about fourteen or fifteen years old. My friend Nick and I were talking about our fear of heights. I felt a little reluctant to admit to being afraid of heights, but he seemed fine with it. I don't remember what was said before this, but I remember him saying, "Y'know, it's not exactly a fear of falling. It's more like... a fear of jumping."

I instantly realized that described my fear as well. I thought, Damn! That was insightful. I wouldn't have ever thought of that myself, but as soon as he pointed it out I recognized it was true.

I'm not aware of any lasting effect on me from that conversation. My fear of heights was not diminished. But for some reason, it's stuck with me all these years.

For the year and a half before he died, my father was bedridden. I visited him often, both to cheer him up and because during that period we had most of the really good conversations that we ever had. He had always been a remote figure, completely wrapped up in making a success of his business, working eighty hours or more each week. Now his confinement opened him up and made him conversational, and I took pleasure in getting to know the man in whose house I had been raised.