My childhood memories all seem very blurry to me; I have come to the conclusion that I was either high from breathing in too many marker fumes (I’ll get to this story later), or I was simply too lost in my own little world full of the fairies that lived in the broken flower pots in my front yard. Most people have fond memories of their childhood. Perhaps they would go fishing with their grandpa - or bake cookies with their mom. My memories all seem to revolve around one instance: how I lost most of my childhood memories.
Oh, back to the markers. My mother often told me that sniffing markers would kill brain cells. On a different occasion she told me that my hair and fingernails were made of dead cells. I’m sure you can see where this is going: sniffing markers = dead cells = longer hair and fingernails. The irony in losing my brain cells is I can’t seem to forget my stupidity when it happened.
Let’s talk about me some more. Ah, here’s a good story to tell. Picture me, sitting on the couch as a little, towhead, seven-year-old, watching the evening news. Of course, the reality of the news was never understood by me. The closest I ever got to understanding what was happening on television was by watching Barney (I seemed to understand the songs just fine.) Even though I didn’t understand the daily reports, I still wanted to watch the news because, “I wanna be a big gurl.”
As I got older (at least in body, perhaps not in mind it), I began to develop a love for reading. Harry Potter or Narnia, fantasy or mystery. It didn’t matter to me as long as a book had words, I would read it. I suspect this is another factor leading to my apparent memory loss of my childhood. I spent so much time with my nose glued to a book (it took ages to get all the glue off) that I never did normal things kids do, such as competing in sports or dabbling in music.
As you can see, I remember little about my early childhood. But perhaps that’s not a bad thing, (I prefer to remember the fairies rather than the fights over chores and schoolwork.) I’m still a little kid at heart (I play with my dino gummy snacks), even though I have had to grow up in more ways than one. I hope I will always be able to keep my memories of losing my memories. And I know I will never grow up completely, because I enjoy picture books and animal crackers too much to ever give them up.