Nostalgia Part III: Early Memories

[pinksonia]

    Earliest memories are funny.  Theory holds that they are moments of extreme emotion, either happy or sad, often traumatic, the kind of monumentus occasions that get burned in the brain for all time.  I don’t know if mine are monumentous, but they certainly establish themes for the rest of my life. 
   

It’s the summer.  The afternoon.  I’m sitting in the two- and three-year-old class at Willistown Country Day School.  I would guess that I am three.  Certainly I am potty trained, as this story revolves around the potty.  Yes, my earliest childhood memory is a traumatic bathroom experience!  This would be why I never used it for English essays involving an earliest childhood memory.  See memory #2.
    I excuse myself from the lesson, in order to utilize the small bathroom in the back of the room.  I finish, get ready to flush, and notice my poop is bright red.  This is not normal.  I am going to die.  (Apparently, I did inherit some genes from my mother’s family for whom death is always the first thought.)
    You would think a three-year-old who just decided that she is dying would scream, cry, or at least tell the teacher.  I simply flushed and returned to my previously scheduled activities, never telling a soul.  Obviously I did not die.  Really, I just ate too much watermelon, but to this day I maintain a pattern of avoidance.  

 

Once again I am in Willistown County Day school, this time in the four-year old room.  It’s sometime early in the year.  I want to say late October because I’m wearing a turtleneck under my jumper, but I also think it’s before my brother was born in late September.  Each morning we sit in a circle on the carpet for lessons.  We discuss a letter every day – today’s is “E”.  We think of words that begin with “E”: elephants, eyes, Evan’s name. 
    Mrs. Wilson (who my father calls the Wicked Witch of the West, although, that is a story for another time.) asks for a volunteer to make the letter “E” using his body.      “You can use as many classmates as you would like to help,” she reminds us.  I know what she’s driving at.  It’s obvious.  Get three classmates to help you.  One lies down in the center of the circle, while the others lie perpendicular to the first student one at her head, one at her waist, and one at her feet.  Anyone in the class could come up with that.  I want to be special.  I want praise.  I raise my hand. 
    “Allison.  Please show us the letter “E”.  Do you need any classmates to help you?”
    “No.”
    I walk to the center of the circle.  Lie down on my side, tuck my head into a die position, and bring my hands to my knees approximating a lowercase “e.”  I had an original idea.  The teacher has to like it.  I wait. Nothing.  Then it comes.
    “Thank you.  Does anyone else know how to make an “E?”
    Another student stands up.  He recruits three friends and they make the obvious figure. 
    “Very good.  Wonderful “E.”
    Wait a minute! They got my praise.  They chose the boring, obvious, everyday answer and were rewarded for it.  I was creative.  Inspired.  I was ignored. 

Comments

[skjaere.livejournal.com]

My earliest memory is sitting on the porch of the house we and another family lived in in Montana. Not much of a memory, just a flash of crawling up into my mother's lap, but I can definitely remember where we were and who was there. The funny thing? We moved out of that house in early to mid 1980, so I was less than two years old at the time.

[pinksonia.livejournal.com]

Apparently I suck at responding in a timely matter. Grr to hotels without internet.

That is a really early memory. I always hear that we don't retain anything before the age of three (or maybe it was four), but based on the sheer number of earliest memory stories I've heard from before that age the scientists must be wrong.

[skjaere.livejournal.com]

I have other memories from that summer as well. I remember distinctly my cousin trying to convince me that my best friend Kirsten was really a boy. I never saw Kirsten again after the Summer of 1980.

I have lots of memories from before my sister was born, which was when I was not quite four, so maybe my brain is just really special.