I Was Eleven
- David's mom hosts a meeting of the hospital women's auxiliary bridge club. (Party time…)
- Mrs. Dillon, the woman on whom eleven-year-old David has a secret crush, attends. She's very sophisticated—she drinks Manhattans, wears scarlet lipstick, and likes jazz.
- Something happens to David's mom when Mrs. Dillon comes over: She actually smiles.
- Mrs. Dillon is the last person to leave, and as David helps her put on her fur coat, she sees a lump on his neck.
- She calls to David's mom—whose name, we learn, is Betty—to have her look at it. Mrs. Dillon says she can't believe David's mom hasn't noticed it, and makes her promise to take him to a doctor.
- When Mrs. Dillon leaves, David's mom is angry because he ruined her party. She's also mad because doctors cost money, and even though David's dad is a doctor, they don't have much money.
- In the next scene, David goes with his parents to a marina, where they're going to spend the day on another doctor's boat.
- David's dad—whose name, we learn, is Ed—asks the doctor, Joe, to look at David's neck, since Joe is "the ear-eye-nose-and-throat man."
- Joe takes a look and guesses that it's a sebaceous cyst (wrong). He's not sure, though, so he asks David's mom to make an appointment with him for the following week.
- In the meantime, he wants X-rays of the area, so he asks David's dad to take them.
- When David goes to his office, Dr. Joe looks at the X-rays and says it is indeed a cyst (still wrong) and that David will need surgery to remove it.
- David's dad gets "a promotion or a raise" (David isn't sure), and allows David's surgery to wait, spending the money on cars, furniture, and appliances instead.
- One night, as David looks at the growing lump on his neck in the bathroom mirror, his parents call him downstairs to talk.
- Don't get excited; it's not the good, productive kind of talking. Instead, they want to know why he's slouching all the time and reading smut.
- And by "smut," they mean Lolita, the classic novel by Vladimir Nabokov.
- Without saying another word, his mom goes into his room, gets his books, and burns them in a trashcan in the yard.