Beginnings
My earliest memory is actually, I think, a memory of a memory. It's what I remember remembering when I was old enough to understand the idea of "your earliest memory." Anyhow, I have some recollection, mediated or no, of figuring out how my crib worked. It was a wooden cage, and one side dropped down when released by a metal bar. As I think back, the bar was well-placed to be tripped by a knee when a parent's hands were full (of me). However, it was also well-placed to be triggered by someone reaching his hand between the bars of the crib, reaching down, and giving it a push.
I don't remember actually getting out of the crib, although I suppose I must have. I simply remember figuring out how it worked, and lowering the side when I was still young enough to be doing it from the inside.
Comments
I have a memory kind of like that, one where I'm standing in my crib and looking out a window at a super-green grass lawn. My parents have told me that this memory of mine is simply not possible, given where my crib was located, etc. Still, I like to keep it.
Posted by: Steven D. Krause | June 12, 2007 5:45 AM
a current piece in PMLA talks about all the autobiography-genre-confusion after James Frey (well, the author marks that moment w/r/t a *popular* brew-ha-ha). the piece is jumpy, but it covers some of this fuzzy memory stuff.
Collin, from early on, you were an engineer, it seems.
Posted by: bonnie lenore kyburz | June 12, 2007 12:06 PM
My earliest memory is of my mum reading me a Winnie the Pooh book (the one where he eats too much honey and can't get back into his cave b/c he's too fat). I was probably 4. Of course, the head injury I sustained in the 4th grade (hole in a barn floor; 9 ft. drop into a cement cow stall) pretty much wiped the disk clean.
Posted by: heather s. | June 15, 2007 5:06 PM
I can remember going to a store called Southern Sash when I was very young. I HATED it when my parents took me there with them because there was just nothing *for* me at that store. Southern Sash was a builders' supply store, akin to Home Depot or Lowe's, but more like a place for contractors than regular consumers. The kicker? This was when my parents were in the process of building their house, and I was only two years old *when the house was finished.*
Posted by: Clancy | June 21, 2007 8:06 PM