Over the weekend I read an internet exchange about what people's earliest memories were. I always find this kind of conversation fascinating for the dichotomy of it: some people's first memories are of momentous, traumatic, or otherwise emotionally engaging events and while others' are of completely trivial occasions. Mine, as we shall shortly go into, is of the former type, but I find the other much more interesting. First of all because what is it, neurologically or psychologically, that made someone's brain hang onto *that* particular bit of trivia? Secondly because it seems those types of earliest memories would be more pure and uncontaminated by other people's tellings.
Anyway, my first memory is from when I was two and a half. It was a weekend evening, and my mom had the area rug in our "den"/family room partially rolled up as she'd been cleaning beneath it. I was running back and forth aimlessly as little kids are wont to do, tripped on the edge of the rolled up rug, and fell against the (sharp!) wooden arm of the sofa. (In the sixties, our parents weren't all that big on the concept of "childproofing"; it's a wonder anyone of my generation made it to adulthood, eh?) I hit just at the corner of my left eye, and OMG, blood everywhere.
I remember my dad holding me in his lap while my mom looked at it, and my mom freaking out at how deep the cut was, saying we had to go to the ER, that I probably needed stitches. Being as I was two, my considered opinion on going to the hospital was Do.Not.Want. and I was insisting I was okay, that I just needed to go to bed. I remember being in the room in the ER and the various doctors and nurses asking me, "Did someone do this to you, honey? Who did this to you?" (Which, actually, way to go with the possible-child-abuse awareness in 1965, former Lynn Hospital.) But I remember being kind of mildly pissed like, were they stupid? I already *told* them I fell and hit my head on the sofa and so did my parents, geez. As you can see, my personality was already fully formed.
In discussing this in later years, my mother was convinced that the reason they were so concerned was because, instead of fighting and crying, struggling and screaming, like they expected from a toddler, I was really mellow and passive and resigned, letting them just do whatever they needed to do. That tickles me, too, that even then I was stoic in that kind of situation.
For many, many years, I had a visible scar at the corner of that eye. You can't see it anymore, but if I run a finger across where it was, I can still feel the skin's a little thicker there. I wonder if by the time I'm an old lady (shut up), even that will be gone. Also? If I'd hit my face an eighth of an inch over, my elementary school years would have been much different. Probably not for the better. I mean, we have already established that the pirate eyepatch is the sexiest and most rock 'n roll of all possible accoutrements, but, sadly, you probably can't pull one off when you're a shy little Catholic schoolgirl.
The preceding has been brought to you by our Department of Pointless Anecdotes! You're welcome!
xoxo
4 comments:
My earliest memory was much more benign, but there were two close runner-ups, similarly violent. One was walking off the end of a dock into the lake. I was small enough that I couldn't swim (which in my case puts it *very* far back). I remember marveling at all the white bubbles around me, then being startled by a huge rush of bubbles when my father jumped into the water, fully clothed, to rescue me.
Another time I was bed-bouncing and managed to fall off the bed backwards into an old-fashioned steam radiator. I did *not* want to go to the hospital...did *not* want five stitches. A couple of years later I was jealous when my younger brother had the same damn accident and had seven stitches.
Nobody asked how it happened. Back it those days, it wasn't that long since childhood death had been commonplace, and no one wasted excess energy on such things.
LOL. I think it's hilarious that you were jealous your brother got two more stitches than you. You people with siblings...it's a whole other world I'll never really be able to understand. :-)
Just imagine if it was a matter of amputation. Then where would the jealousy go?
At least I'm not a twin. Now *there* is sibling rivalry at its most concentrated.
I've mentioned before my dad is (was) a twin? Since apparently in the 1920s either medical opinion or Eastern European immigrant tradition (I'm not sure which) specified that you could *not* nurse twins, my uncle T got the boob and my poor dad got the bottle. Can you imagine?!?
And yet, I don't think they ever had significant rivalry between them. It's all very strange. Also? My dad's outlived T by 5 1/2 years so far, so the whole breastmilk immunity thing is obviously bogus. hshaha
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