I remember the first time I considered a memory. There's no way to know for sure, but it must have been around 3 or 4 years of age.
I was crawling around the living room of the first apartment I ever remember living in. As I crawled past the couch, I scratched my eye and got pretty freaked out. It began with a fear of having hurt my eye, which I knew was delicate, but by the time my mom had arrived to take care of me, my fear had turned to something else. Somehow the trauma of scratching my eye caused me to think "What happened yesterday?"
I realized I didn't know what had happened at all. I knew my name, I knew my parents, I knew that one time my mother gave me a delicious red cookie, and I knew I had just scratched my eye. That was it.
Of course the thought process behind all that was much more abstract and from the perspective of a 3 or 4 yearold, but that was the basic thought process. I had no idea what had happened before I scratched my eye, and that scared the shit out of me. I remembered things after that.
----------------
FIRST SOCIAL INTERACTION EVER
A little later, probably aged 5, I had my first day of preschool. I was fucking terrified. I did not want to go at all, and I was angry at my mother for getting a job and not being able to stay home all day with me.
A woman took my hand and led me immediately out to the playground, where I was still crying. There were a lot of kids out there and I went into a sideways tube and curled up.
An asian girl came by and asked me why I was crying. I said "I want to go home", so she sat down and held her hands up on an imaginary wheel and pretended to drive the tube like a car. She turned around and said "You are home now!"
I stopped crying, got out of the tube, and tried out climbing a jungle gym for the first time.
---------------
FIRST NEGATIVE SOCIAL INTERACTION EVER
Probably around a month later-
Could you believe that it was a field trip? We were all going to go out to Dairy Queen to get ice cream, and I had to get a form and money from my parents so I could go. This day also happened to be "bring your toy" day, so I had brought a red race car (I had no interest in cars but it was hefty and metallic and at the time I thought it was the most impressive toy I had)
It looked a lot like that, but older and without an RC antenna. I was so overjoyed at being able to bring my toy AND get ice cream that I decided to spin around in circles, arms out, still holding my toy. A girl walked into my path and I unintentionally hit her in the head with the toy car. She cried and told on me. The teacher punished me by not letting me go to Dairy Queen with everyone else. I sat alone in the classroom for awhile, and when they got back, they all had ice cream while I was in a corner.
--------------------
LESSONS LEARNED
That asian girl was awesome and remarkable kindness does exist.
Morons will blindly walk into your happy storm so be careful.
Never ever forgive the teacher who kept me from going to Dairy Queen. Ever. Bitch.
No comments:
Post a Comment