Fresh out of wrote-last-night canned content, this one’s gotta come correct with original content – written on-the-spot. It’s not as easy to do as you may think. Go home tonight, try to write a few paragraphs about something… I swear it looks easy but it’s not. So, when I sat down and thought about what to write tonight, this is what happened. A heavily back-linked entry, which is good because all the trawling through old posts gave me a chance to fix posts where things some WordPress conversion artifacts were still hiding, and give titles and categories to those still un-titled/categoried. At least I’m still putting-out; enjoy.
I think it’s funny the things I can remember from early childhood. Some are just random snippets, seemingly disconnected; some I don’t trust as true memories and some I’m almost certain are remembered incorrectly or to an exaggerated extent. I’m gonna go through some of them now, and maybe link to some that I’ve written about previously so I don’t have to write about what I’ve already written about. Here’s how I approached this: I know about how old I was when we made our first move, and about how old I was when we made our second – so I can use the “where” of the memory to help date it, at least to within a +/- range of years. Our first move happened when I was about five years old, and our second when I was about seven. Anything from the first house I remember happened at five and under, which is pretty damn impressive; and anything in the second house between five and seven. I’m gonna start from the later memories and work back.
5-7 years old: I’m swinging on the swingset in the backyard (in my memory my brother is with me, but it doesn’t seem to work with the age-range), listening to the radio. We were waiting to hear either “Eye of the Tiger,” or “We Built this City.” “We Built this City” came on, and we swung furiously to the beat, whipped into a frenzy by the ‘Starship.
5-7 years old: I’m walking to kindergarten with an older neighbor, mom let me as long as he walked with me. One morning, a car pulled up and asked if we wanted a ride. Having been trained from an early age, we knew to decline. After the car left, we both ran the rest of the way to school and told a teacher.
5-7 years old: I found this thing, a kind of toy or something… it’s possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a flat shape about half and inch thick, and shaped in the outline of a skull, it’s filled with some red fluid, maybe meant to look like blood. I found it in the street. For some reason, I cherish this thing, and remember it to this day for how utterly awesome I thought I was. You couldn’t separate me from this red-juice-filled skull thing. One day, while cherishing the skull, I noticed a stinky greasy substance on my hand; the red juice was leaking. I had to throw the skull away. To this day I can see that skull going into the garbage can; it was so unique, I wonder what it was.
5-7 years old: I get my first love letter, to this day the feelings are burned into my mind. Read about it here.
5-7 years old: Preschool. I think my mom works here; we take naps on cots. I remember I was afraid to crawl in the playground stuff because they found a black widow in there. For some reason, I have this memory of having to walk from preschool to somewhere else… I think after preschool or something. I know this part of the memory is likely wrong, but it’s somehow tied to preschool in my mind. I remember my mom, or someone, showing me where I was supposed to go, walking with me, practicing with me – it seems like it was maybe a mere block, around the corner perhaps, from wherever my origin was. But, in a form true to my personality, when I finally had to make the walk solo, I panicked thinking I had made a wrong turn. I just remember the feeling of complete fear and desperation thinking I had gotten myself lost. Then I turned the corner I thought was right, and ended up seeing my destination… I can still remember my relief. What an odd memory.
0 to 5 years old: I did something I’m still ashamed of, even though I was probably too young to hold myself responsible. I don’t feel like summarizing it, but will instead link it directly.
0 to 5 years old: We played with matches and I burned my finger; I hid it from my mom. Read about it in the second paragraph of my all-encompassing fire entry.
0 to 5 years old: We have a huge tree in our front yard, my brother and I call it the “sticky tree.” I remember it as towering above the house, with a full canopy and hanging vines – I know now this must be exaggerated. My brother and I would climb it. We’d swing from the vines, Tarzan-style, we’d camp out un the crooks of branches high above the ground.
0 to 5 years old: The daughter of my mom’s friend and I are jumping on my bed. After we jump around a bit, we fall down together in a heap and I tell her, “You can kiss me now.” She does. We jump some more, laugh, play, and I tell her, “You can kiss me now.” She does it every time. While I don’t count this as my first “real” kiss (I was too young to appreciate it), it ranks high in my list of memories.
One thing I notice about these memories, almost all of them involve my little brother, but almost certainly some happened without him – based purely on how old he’d be at the time. I’m not exactly sure how well on my way to being six I was when we moved that first time, but I’m pretty sure that even if I was right there my brother, who would then be three, wasn’t climbing to the top of jungle trees and swinging on vines with me. I’m beginning to even doubt his participation in the whole Naomi thing… it just seems like I may have “added” him to some memories, I dunno.
I guess this is a “thing” with me, as I’ve done it before. Something I like doing, I suppose. Anyway, the entry on the whole turned out a lot weaker than I intended – but I forgot there was a new episode of Lost on tonight and Sharaun wanted to practice her lesson plan on me.
Goodnight.