Samuel Johnson Is Indignant by Lydia Davis

out of anger her neighbors on one side and her neighbors across the street, who had scorned her family, out of revenge the grocer from whom she had had to beg for credit, and the pawnbroker, and two moneylenders, then a streetcar conductor whom she did not know, and finally—rushing with her long knife into the Town Hall—the young mayor and one of his councilmen as they sat puzzling over an amendment.

Happy Memories
    I imagine that when I am old, I will be alone, and in pain, and my eyes will be too weak to read. I am afraid of those long days. I like my days to be happy. I try to think what would be a happy way to spend those difficult days. It may be that the radio will be enough to fill those days. An old person has her radio, I have heard it said. And I have heard it said that in addition to her radio, she has her happy memories. When her pain is not too bad, she can go over her happy memories and be comforted. But you must have happy memories. What bothers me is that I’m not sure how many happy memories I will have. I am not even sure just what makes a happy memory, the kind that will both comfort me and give me pleasure when I can’t do anything else. Just because I enjoy something now does not mean that it will make a happy memory. In fact, I know that many of the things I enjoy now will not make good happy memories later. I am happy doing the work I do, alone at a desk. That work is a great part of every day. But when I am old and alone all the time, will it be enough to think about the work I used to do? Another thing I enjoy is eating candy by myself while I read a book in the evening, but I don’t think that will make a good happy memory either. I like to play the piano, I like to look at the plants that come up in the yard beginning in March, I enjoy walking with my dog, and looking down into his face at his good eye and his bad eye, I like to see the sky in the late afternoon, especially in November, I like petting my cats, hearing their cries, and holding them. But I suspect that the memory of my pets will not be enough, either, even if I love them. There are things that make me laugh, but often they are grim things, and they will not make a good happy memory either, unless I share them with someone else. Then it is not the amusement but the sharing of it that makes the happy memory. It seems as though a happy memory has to involve other people. I think of all the different people. I think of the good encounters with people. Most of the people I talk to on the telephone are friendly, even when I have called a wrong number. I have a happy memory of stopping my car by the side of the road to talk to a woman about her garden. I talk to the people who work in the post office and the drugstore, and I used to talk to the people at the bank before they put an automated teller machine in the lobby. When a man came to fix the dehumidifier in the basement, we talked about the history of this town. I enjoy my conversations with the librarian down the street. I enjoy the friendly messages I receive from bookstores selling secondhand books. But I don’t think any of these encounters will make a memory that will comfort me when I am old. Maybe a happy memory can’t involve people who were only strangers or casual friends. You can’t be left alone, in your old age and pain, with memories that include only people who have forgotten you. The people in your happy memories have to be the same people who want to have you in their own happy memories. A lively dinner party does not make a good happy memory if no one there cared very much for any of the others. I think of some of the good or meaningful times I have had with the people close to me, to see if they would make good happy memories. Meeting a friend at a railway station on a sunny day seems to have made a good happy memory, even though later we talked about some difficult things, like starvation and dehydration. There were walks in the