I Remember Nothing [0]
FICTION
Heartburn
ESSAYS
I Feel Bad About My Neck
Nora Ephron Collected
Scribble Scribble
Crazy Salad
Wallflower at the Orgy
DRAMA
Love, Loss, and What I Wore (with Delia Ephron)
Imaginary Friends
SCREENPLAYS
Julie & Julia
Bewitched (with Delia Ephron)
Hanging Up (with Delia Ephron)
You’ve Got Mail (with Delia Ephron)
Michael (with Jim Quinlan, Pete Dexter, and Delia Ephron)
Mixed Nuts (with Delia Ephron)
Sleepless in Seattle (with David S. Ward and Jeff Arch)
This Is My Life (with Delia Ephron)
My Blue Heaven
When Harry Met Sally …
Cookie (with Alice Arlen)
Heartburn
Silkwood (with Alice Arlen)
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2010 by Heartburn Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Some of the pieces in this collection have previously appeared in the following: “Christmas Dinner,” “I Just Want to Say: Teflon” as “Farewell to Teflon,” “I Just Want to Say: The Egg-White Omelette” as “The Informational Cascade and the Egg-White Omelette,” “I Just Want to Say: The World Is Not Flat” as “And by the Way, the World Is Not Flat,” “Twenty-Five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again” in The Huffington Post; “Addicted to L-U-V,” “Going to the Movies” as “The Last Picture Show,” “I Just Want to Say: Chicken Soup” as “The Chicken Soup Chronicles,” “I Just Want to Say: No, I Do Not Want Another Bottle of Pellegrino” as “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Dinner,” “The Six Stages of E-Mail,” and “Who Are You?” in The New York Times; “My Life as an Heiress” in The New Yorker; and “The Legend” in Vogue.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ephron, Nora.
I remember nothing,
and other reflections / Nora Ephron.—
1st. ed.
p. cm.
“This is a Borzoi Book.”
eISBN: 978-0-307-59562-1
1. Ephron, Nora. 2. Middle-aged women—Humor. 3. American wit and humor. I. Title.
PS3555.P5125 2010
814′.54—dc22
2010026989
v3.1
For Richard and Mona
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I Remember Nothing
Who Are You?
Journalism: A Love Story
The Legend
My Aruba
My Life as an Heiress
Going to the Movies
Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again
I Just Want to Say: The Egg-White Omelette
I Just Want to Say: Teflon
I Just Want to Say: No, I Do Not Want Another Bottle of Pellegrino
I Just Want to Say: The World Is Not Flat
I Just Want to Say: Chicken Soup
Pentimento
My Life as a Meat Loaf
Addicted to L-U-V
The Six Stages of E-Mail
Flops
Christmas Dinner
The D Word
The O Word
What I Won’t Miss
What I Will Miss
Acknowledgments
About the Author
I Remember Nothing
I have been forgetting things for years—at least since I was in my thirties. I know this because I wrote something about it at the time. I have proof. Of course, I can’t remember exactly where I wrote about it, or when, but I could probably hunt it up if I had to.
In my early days of forgetting things, words would slip away, and names. I did what you normally do when this happens: I scrolled through a mental dictionary, trying to figure out what letter the word began with, and how many syllables were involved. Eventually the lost thing would float back into my head, recaptured. I never took such lapses as harbingers of doom, or old age, or actual senescence. I always knew that whatever I’d forgotten was going to come back to me sooner or later. Once I went to a store to buy a book about Alzheimer’s disease and forgot the name of it. I thought it was funny. And it was, at the time.
Here’s a thing I’ve never been able to remember: the title of that movie with Jeremy Irons. The one about Claus von Bülow. You know the one. All I ever succeeded in remembering was