The Daily Rumpus
Get Overly Personal Emails
From Stephen Elliott
Judy — Mother
My dad has a lot of money and he’s a lot older than my mom. She didn’t have any family and when she met him she thought she hit the jackpot. He was living with his mother, my grandmother, and devoid of social skills.
...moreIn 2005 I began interviewing people I grew up with and transcribing the interviews, creating a kind of memoir but in other people’s words.
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Mato — Actor
I went to a Catholic school. I was a shy kid and got beat up by girls.
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Fred White, Age 86
Mission, Kansas
“She was quite a doll and I didn’t want anybody else.”
My wife, Helen, and I have been married sixty-five years. I met her in junior high school.
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Dominic Sclafani, Age 30
Tucson, Arizona
“He’s like, ‘She’s going to eat you alive.’ And I go, ‘Yes, I know.’”
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Betty Anne May, Age 80
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
“That man could turn me on by touching my little fingernail.”
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Kayla James, Age 5
Bellingham, Washington
“He had a lot of cool toys, and I really liked the toys.”
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Brigitte Aiton, Age 44
New York, New York
“How do you deal with the fact that the person you’re with might hate you?”
It was the first summer we were together. We were twenty-three years old.
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An Oral History of January 1, 1989: Circle Jerks Vs. Skinheads
Greg Hetson (guitar, Circle Jerks/Bad Religion): Recently my daughter asked me if any skinheads ever came to Circle Jerks shows. When I told her yes she said, “Don’t they know you’re Jews?” I guess they did, and so I told her this story…
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“I have no idea what her name was. Something Polish. It was a girl at a family reunion…”
Selections from answers from interviews taken by students for English 251: Interviews and Oral History class at The College of Saint Rose:
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“Why are you doing these interviews?”
Wendi – Writer
We first met at a party at Lauren’s house. Pat brought you. I think you were in sixth grade, I was in seventh, he was in eighth. You were looking around the room, like your head was spinning, trying to take it all in, and there really wasn’t much to take in, just bowls of potato chips, nothing on TV.
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I put myself in the group home. I was in the therapist office with my mom and I said, “I give up. I’m not going to try anymore,” meaning getting along with my mom, and he suggested the group home. To me it was a terrific idea.
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I grew up in Falls Church, Virgina, which is a suburb of D.C. Now it’s just a lot of Bed Bath and Beyond, and Starbucks. But before it was Pet Boys, that autotrack store, and one grocery store. It’s always been concrete.
Jenni – Patient Account Representative
I treat people the way I’m treated, with the same respect. I’m not worried about your feelings.
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Jeff Buckley: Having Tim Buckley as my father gave me the parts needed to play music. Even if I went and became a lawyer and someone asked me to sing something, I’d have the parts to sing. But that’s it.
...moreIn 2005 I began interviewing people I grew up with and transcribing the interviews, creating a kind of memoir but in other people’s words. What’s most interesting turns out not so much to be the things we remember differently as the things we remember the same.
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In 2005 I began interviewing people I grew up with and transcribing the interviews, creating a kind of memoir but in other people’s words.
I left home at thirteen and spent a year on the streets, more or less, and four years in group homes. Because of that my social network was significantly wider than average. In 2005 I began interviewing people I grew up with and transcribing the interviews, creating a kind of memoir but in other people’s words.
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As a teenager, Hally McGehean was the most glamorous person I knew. When I was 17 I was in love with her. Not a serious love. The kind of love a 17-year-old boy has for a woman in her twenties who wears cowboy boots and sundresses that reveal the freckles on the tops of her breasts.
John – X-Ray Technician
It was like third or fourth grade when we first met. It was you, me, your sister, and my brother. We were all into comics. Later, you and I would rob the comic store. We weren’t the only ones to rob the comic store.
...moreIn 2005 I began interviewing people I grew up with. Because I left home at thirteen and spent four years in group homes, my social network was significantly wider than most people of that age. What’s most interesting about these interviews turns out not so much to be the things we remember differently as the things we remember the same.
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It is -7º F outside. In his kitchen, Harry makes me tea. He is a broad-shouldered man with a prominent chin and a deep, smooth voice. He has been remodeling this house for the better part of a decade, after expanding the house where his children grew up and his first wife still lives, less than a block away from here.
An Oral History of May 3, 1987: The Day The Butthole Surfers Came to Trenton, New Jersey
(This is an oral history of Lorelei Lee in her own words, transcribed and edited by Stephen Elliott. If you came here searching for adult content featuring Lorelei Lee, click here. The links in this article are not safe for work.)
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I was born in a convent in Buffalo.
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I’m from Portland, Oregon. Not Portland proper, but the suburbs. When I was seven I moved to an island called Saipan, where my mother is from. She’s a Pacific Islander, full blooded. She speaks Chamorro.
I was one of three white kids in my school so I got beat up a lot.
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