June 18, 2024:

"How do you want your hamburger prepared?", asks the waiter.

How do I want what? I don't know what that is.

The table mates, friends of the friend who brought me, explain. You can choose medium, medium well, medium rare, rare, or well.

We don't have that at home.
We have Jack in the Box, and it's all the same.
Or we have barbecue, on a small Hibachi on the patio, and anyway I usually have hotdogs.
It's the only hamburgers I've ever seen, and they come without options.

June 17, 2024:

"String cheese?", offers a classmate.

What cheese? I don't know what that is.

He has to demonstrate, tearing strips, illustrating what "string" means.

We don't have string cheese at home.
We have American cheese, in individually wrapped slices.
We don't eat it by itself, we put it between Wonder Bread and mayonnaise to make sandwiches.
It's the only cheese I've ever seen.

June 16, 2024:

She's a reader. Our apartment is filled with books.

She has three bookcases in dark wood, ten shelves altogether. They hold her college textbooks; some volumes of Jung; all of the Signet Shakespeare paperbacks; James Bond and Sherlock Holmes; Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Tolkien. She reads ubiquitously. It's only later that I learn why.

In La Mesa I have two small shelves finished in natural shellac. We finished them ourselves. I have Hardy Boys; the Companion Library; some picture books of airplanes. It's only later, in Clairemont, that I encounter history and military theory, and then we add floor-to-ceiling metal shelves from Sears.

This is the core contribution she makes to my development. I read because she does and because we have books in the apartment.