I talked to my mom this week and she told me a few things about me when I was a kid and I don’t remember any of them! I frankly don’t have any memories before the age of 12 as you know.
She told me about me running with a pencil. I fell and jammed that pencil right in the back of my throat. There was a pencil shaped hole in my throat. We didn’t have insurance so she called the doctor and asked what she should do. Nothing apparently and sure enough, a day or two later, the hole closed.
A similar thing happened when I was being chased by a kid with a knife on my bike. I wrecked my bike and fell on the kid/knife and it cut a gash in my thigh. Again, no insurance, so no stitches. Big scar on my leg.
Another one involved one of my sisters. I had 4. On this particular day my sister decided to play a little trick on me. We were out in our older sister’s car, waiting for her. She thought she would do something funny. She told me to put my fingers to my lips like I was holding a cigarette. So I did. Back then cars were equipped with lighters for cigarettes. You would push in this knob looking thing and it would heat up and when it was hot you could stick it to the end of a cigarette and it would light it.
My sister had pushed in the lighter and it was red hot. I was sitting there acting like I was smoking a cigarette and she shoved that lighter right onto my lips like she was lighting a cigarette. As I was running and screaming up the front steps into the house she was chasing me yelling, “Don’t tell mom, don’t tell mom!” Right…like mom wouldn’t notice. 🙂 That memory doesn’t make me smile, but it does torment my sister so I enjoy that.
Finally, she told me about a time when I was 5 that tripped and fell into a coffee table and cut a gash in my head. It too required stitches but no insurance. You know what my mom did? She took hair from the top of the cut and pulled it down over the cut to the bottom side and then superglued it. She “made” stitches. It’s like we were Amish! No memories of any of this.
Then today I had a memory. And it was before I was 12!
The memory that came to me tonight at dinner was much more simple. Sweet. Innocent. I remembered my mom baking cookies or cakes or making icing and when she was done, she would give me the beaters to lick clean.
Now THAT’S a great memory.
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