The Two Words No Memoir Writer Should Ever Use

ARE THERE SOME PHRASES that should never appear in print? Maybe, maybe not. After all, I’m all for place savers — cliches, song lyrics, bumper sticker phrases — in that infamous vomit draft I write about so often. But in the later and final drafts, I’d say there are exceptions. And of those, perhaps there are two words no memoir writer should ever use. This idea came to me after a online conversation with the writer Brock Heasley, after he suggested that he knew exactly which two words should be banned for life from our work. See if you agree.

The Two Words No Memoir Writer Should Ever Put Together

by Brock Heasley

I didn’t have a clue how to write memoir. I’d read precisely one memoir in my lifetime, back in my high school days: Star Trek Movie Memories by William Shatner. In this magnificent, gossipy tome, the once and forever Captain Kirk related his on-set recollections of working on the Star Trek movies. Years later, when I thought I might write a memoir of my own, I could not remember a word of it.

So, I sat down for a think. What are the rules of memoir? What are the pitfalls? The word, “memoir,” means something. What it means, I concluded, is that I have permission to not waffle in my writing.

A memoir is and should be a book based on memory. The very genre itself implies an imperfection in the narrative. A writer of memoir does not report, he relates events as seen through a prism of time and fog. This means there is never any need to equivocate in memoir. I don’t need to explain that I’m not sure I’m getting things in the right order or admit that it’s questionable whether or not this or that conversation took place exactly as I’m transcribing it from the recesses of my brain.

My brain recesses quite a bit, actually. People and places and scents and colors and emotions fall out all the time, only to come back years later when finally provoked. What happened to them in the meantime? Did they lose some of their shape? Or are they just as sharp a recollection as they always were? I have no idea.

But here’s the thing: it’s not my job to know. It’s not my job or your job as a writer of memoir to admit to the fallacy of memory. The name of the genre—memoir—puts that fallacy front and center. You are absolved. You only need to be truthful to the best of your ability and not make junk up wholesale. That’s it. Don’t be a jerk and try to put one over on the reader, and don’t be a jerk to yourself by wringing your hands over your own fallibility.

Raised by a Dead Man: A Coming-of-Age Story Between Two Shootings, my memoir about the growing up I had do between the two times my father was gunned down in armed robberies, begins three days before my twelfth birthday. I started writing it when I was 30-years-old. Some memories of my pre-teen years are crystal clear, some not so much. From the very first page I was tempted to write two words I quickly realized should never, never, never, never, NEVER be written together in a memoir EVER, not once:

“I remember…”

What a tedious phrase. Writing “I remember” in a memoir is a bit like flashing “Here’s the scary part” on screen at a horror movie. There’s no need to remind people where the story is coming from. To do so makes you, the writer, sound unsure of your narrative. And you’re not unsure. You know what you know and there’s no arguing with that. So don’t argue with yourself.

You can also forgo using any of “I remember’s” cousins, like “I recall,” or its opposites like “I can’t remember/recall.” Trust the reader to understand what they’re getting into and free yourself from such waffling. Everything you write in a memoir can be written with confidence because your story is your perspective and it doesn’t have to be anything more than that. Your memoir is beholden to no greater, absolute, inaccessible truth of what “actually” happened.

Our only job is to tell readers what happened insofar was we recall it. There is never any need to remind the reader that’s what we’re doing.

RAISED BY A DEAD MAN, an excerpt

The two Seniors wore Letterman jackets and were big enough to fill them out. They were alone, seated on the floor at the midpoint of the first floor hallway of the Science building; backs leaning against the opposing walls, ogre-like feet stretched out towards the middle. There was no way to walk around the two brutes. Nor between them. The only way through was to go over them.

It was lunchtime. Tom and I had just as much right to walk the hallways as anyone else. The Brutes had chosen to sit there, like that. We easily stepped over their feet without touching either of them, with nary a lag in our stride. Apparently, to do so was a serious breach of Brute Protocol.

“Stupid, chicken legged Freshmen,” a voice behind us said. “Did we give you permission to walk by?”

Did we need it? No. No, we did not. I turned around and explained that very simple fact to the two Brutes as politely as I could and with as few words as possible, so that they would understand. “It’s not your hallway,” I said. “We’ll walk where we want to walk.”

Before I turned back around to continue walking with Tom out of the building, I glimpsed the Brute on the left starting to rise up from his golden throne on the floor. “WHAT did you say to me? WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?”

“You really gonna make me repeat it?” I called back.

“Shut up, Brock,” Tom whispered to me desperately as we both picked up some speed. “Just shut UP!”

“Come back and say it to my FACE, Freshman!”

Without turning back around again, I, the suicidal teenager, shouted as loud as I could into the hallway, “You heard me the first time!” And then, just a little quieter (though not nearly enough), “Morons!”

That did it. We had already made it to the exit of the building, but, just as the door was closing behind us, I looked back to see the Brutes getting fully up off the floor, one of them yelling “Let’s get ‘em!”

“TOM! GO!”

Once on the outside, Tom and I had two options: either a) we could run into the loving arms of a group of adoring cheerleaders who would recognize our loner status for the very ‘James Dean’ appeal it held, or b) we could be stupid Freshmen and run back into the Science building via the outer stairwell to the second floor. Since multiple women vying for our attention had been such a problem in the past, we bounded up those stairs as fast as our chicken legs could carry us.

At the top of the stairs I looked down. What I saw sent me into a panic. “He’s right behind us!” Funny. Only one of them was after us.

Tom wasted no time throwing open the double doors leading us back inside the building. We ran as fast as we possibly could down the upstairs hallway, leaping over the bewildered science nerds sitting on the floor waiting patiently for their next class. My heart raced ahead of me. I couldn’t get going fast enough. We needed to reach the other side of the building and the indoor stairwell. And after that? Down the stairs back to the first floor of the building and out the front doors to salvation!

I looked back. I wanted to see just how fast this Brute could run. Pretty fast, as it turned out. It was possible he had earned that jacket.

“Don’t look back!” Tom shouted.

“RRRAAARRRRRR!!!!” Brute One screamed (or would have in the cartoon version of this scene).

Fast as we could, we rounded the corner and leapt down into the indoor stairwell. We had made it down to the first tier of stairs and nearly to the second when, suddenly, there was Brute Two, coming up the stairs right toward us. We stopped, turned, and tried to go back up the way we came. We couldn’t. Brute One was descending. He caught up to us and went straight for Tom, grabbing him with gigantic, adult-like hands and pinning Tom’s arms behind his back. Tom wasn’t going anywhere. We were both trapped.

Brute Two came right up on me in the stairwell, getting right into my face. We were eye-to-sternum and I wasn’t backing down. I knew that the Brutes, whatever my crime, wouldn’t respect me if I folded. We’d just invite more abuse if I did. I’d seen enough After School Specials to know that much. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Tom being forced into submission and completely freaking out. He threw me a look that seemed to be asking “What are you doing?” I honestly didn’t know. Yet.

Brute Two snarled at me, licked his teeth, and, speaking to his insecurities, said, “You better watch your smart little Freshman mouth. Apologize to us.”

“Tell me what I said and I’ll apologize to you,” I said back.

“You know what you said.”

“So tell me.”

He couldn’t. “Do you want us to kick your sorry Freshman butt? You got a smart little Freshman mouth on you and I think you need your butt kicked.”

Tom’s eyes plead with me to just apologize! A part of me screamed something similar. I was completely out-of-my-mind scared, but it didn’t stop me.

“Tell me what I said and then kick my butt. Here we are. I can’t stop you.” Certainly not at that range… or ever. “Unless you’re afraid?”

That was it. He was afraid. The look came over Brute Two’s face at once—he was afraid to beat us up. The Brutes had expected to intimidate us and make us cower and beg for our lives, and instead we called them on their bluff. If we weren’t going to apologize, what were they supposed to do? Let us go? Not without looking foolish. We still needed our butts kicked.

So, Brute Two did what any red-blooded American does when there’s a job that needs doing and he doesn’t want to do it—he called in the Mexicans. Up at the top of the stairs looking down on us was our audience—two Hispanic Sophomores in full gangsta regalia who had been watching the entire confrontation. Where they came from, I didn’t know, but as Brute Two cast his eyes about in search of his dignity, he finally saw them.

“Hey, we’ll get those two Mexicans to beat you up!” he shouted, pointing upward. “Hey, you two, come beat up this—“ –chicken legged Freshman. Right. It was sounding less like an insult and more like the guy was admiring my gams.

To my surprise, the ‘Mexicans’ obeyed orders, smiled broadly and went into tough guy mode, marching down the stairs towards us. “Yeah, yeah we’ll take care of him for you. Sure, sure. Yeah, let’s kick his butt! Let’s do it!”

I wondered if they might have knives.

“Don’t forget about this one,” Brute One reminded them as he held up Tom just a little bit higher.

“Yeah, yeah—him too. We’ll beat ‘em both up for you, man!”

Once they got closer, I recognized them. I knew these ‘Mexicans!’ They were not only in the same P.E. class as me, their lockers were directly across from mine in the same row. No one else in our row had aerosol deodorant, so, for about 2 minutes every day, I was a very popular guy. I generously allowed anyone around me, these ‘Mexicans’ included, to have use of the only deodorant in existence that can be safely shared between strangers without fear of contamination. These guys depended on me every day to get them through sixth and seventh periods without smelling like sweaty turds.

This was my superhero moment. I didn’t have the muscles of Superman and I looked a lot more like Clark Kent, so the only way out was the Batman way—with smarts.

Brutes One and Two let Tom and I go and shoved us towards the ‘Mexicans.’ While the Brutes stood by, they grabbed Tom and I roughly by our shirts and pushed us against each other and into the brick wall bordering the stairwell.

“Hey, you think you can talk like that to them?” the one pushing me said. “Is that what you think? You think you can just say what you want, man?”

“You wanna say it to us?” The one giving Tom a hard time got right into his ear. “Say what you said to them to us. Say it to us!” Tom tried to stay as still as possible while under assault from the verbal barrage. “You flinching? Look at this white boy flinch!”

They were close to me, but they didn’t recognize me. Still, it was the only play I had:

“Hey man, if you beat us up I’ll cut off your supply of deodorant.”

The two volunteer thugs stopped immediately and took a good long look at me. Slowly, recognition dawned on their faces. The Brutes looked completely confused (as opposed to their default state, only mostly confused) as Tom and I were quickly let go.

“Oh…yeah! Yeah, this guy’s OK!” the one who was formerly hassling—and now practically hugging—me said. “Look, look there’s no problem here. This guy’s OK. Everything’s fine here. No trouble. You don’t need to do that. Why you want us to smell bad for the honeys? Why you wanna do that, man?”

“I don’t, man,” I said. “We good now?”

“Yeah, man. We good. It’s OK. They’re OK, right?”

“Super fresh, man!” The other one said as he let Tom go. “We gotta stay clean. For the ladies.” Then he turned to the Brutes and mimed putting on a fresh coat under his pits. “You know what I’m sayin’?”

Puzzled and fearful, the Brutes looked at each other and nodded their heads in agreement. The Mexicans patted us on our backs and sped us on our way. Without looking back, Tom and I took off for the door we had been trying to exit from in the first place. We were beside ourselves, almost skipping with delight as we got as far away from the Science Building as possible and recounted the story to each other with utter, fearful delight.

The Brutes never bothered us again, even going so far as to apologize to us the next day for what happened. I tried not to read too much into that.

Author’s bio

Brock Heasley’s greatest accomplishment is tricking his gorgeous wife Erin into marrying him in 2000. Together with their three daughters Elora, Campbell and Violet, they live in Fresno and enjoy Pixar movies, dancing in the living room to good music and eating breakfast for dinner.

Brock’s memoir, Raised by a Dead Man: A Coming-of-Age Story Between Two Shootings, is in search of a publisher and is represented by Bonnie Solow of Solow Literary. He is currently working on a second memoir, Worlds Apart, a modern day Romeo and Juliet story between a Mormon and Protestant. You can read more about him on his website.