Writing Excercise #3

The next project I am going to share was to write one to two pages about the first three memories I have as a child, and this is what I came up with.

-B
If you never said you missed than don’t say you never lied

The first memory of my childhood that I can remember with any clarity is of when I was in the hospital for the first time. I may have been 5, but it seems to me like I was older, and I probably was. I was admitted for anemia, which they discovered I had at a young age. The reason I remember it vividly is because it set the course the next few years of my life, at least up until the age of 18. This was the first crack in my medical block of ice.

I remember my whole family, both sides, coming to see me. It seemed like they were all worried, as I am sure they were, but I am not used to worrying. I tend to not worry about much, as I learned so young that what happens will happen and I will have to deal with it whether I like it or not. I remember not having worried about it as I knew it was not much, I have always been very attuned to my body and what is going on with it.

I can remember clearly that my uncle Andy gave me some comic books, which I still have. I can remember that my uncle’s friend Valesca gave me a model of dinosaur bones that I built, because she was really into archeology and it gave me something to do while in bed. I can remember my brother buying me the Nintendo Final Fantasy game and bringing the Nintendo into my hospital room so we could play it. It seems odd that I would remember gifts people gave to me, but I still have them. I have always been a pack rat.

It may seem a little morbid that lying in a hospital bed, waiting to die is the first memory of my childhood, and I agree it does appear that way. But this was a major event in my life and in my family’s life as well. I remember it so well that I swear I could even recall conversations we had. I remember that my dad’s best friend Greg brought me In-N-Out for lunch one day because the food in the hospital was horrible. I can remember all these things, but can’t recall how old I was. That seems odd. I now believe I was probably closer to 10. Most of that time period in my life was one giant blur, so it is more than fathomable that I was that old.

The second memory from my childhood that I remember with any clarity is when I broke my arm. I do not remember how old I was, but I had to be younger than 10. I was playing on a slide in our backyard, and my brother dared me to jump off. Like the smart kid that I am, I jumped off, and landed on a pile of bricks. I remember going in to the hospital to get my cast on, and I remember the house it happened in, but I can not remember where that house was, what city it was in. I imagine it was somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, but I cannot say for sure.

I can actually see myself standing on the slide. This is the freaky part; I remember jumping, landing, the hospital, and afterwards. The strange part is that I cannot remember anything before the moment that I jumped. Now I naturally assumed that this is due to the human psyche and how we tend to only remember the important details of an important event, but with me I usually remember the details leading up to the event and not the event itself. The mind really does work in mysterious ways.

The third memory of my childhood that comes to mind would be the day of my aunts wedding. I remember this mainly for one reason; I had a cherry coke with my grandfather. Now I know this sounds weird but hear me out. Everyone was wearing tuxes and the normal wedding attire, and I must have been close to 8 or 9 years old at the time. People were dancing and doing the usual wedding routine, but I was bored. So I went up to talk to m grandfather and he bought me a cherry coke, and we just sat at the bar and talked and drank cherry coke. The reason I believe this memory comes to mind is that he loves to talk. He doesn’t talk a lot but he likes having conversations and that’s the memory I have of him the most, having conversations with him about anything and everything. When I was living in Northridge I went to Shakey’s Pizza for some of their famous potato wedges and he was there picking up some food and we just sat down and talked and waited for our food.

Every time I go to southern California I stop by and say hi to them, and we talk about history or whatever and that’s always going to be my memories of him. Just the two of us talking about god knows what while my grandmother makes dinner. I am not sure why the wedding conversation is the one I remember the most as I can not remember what that particular conversation was about, but that’s the earliest one I have of us talking.