Ah, memories.
There are gifted people who can recall their massive memory vault in great detail, and then there are those who can’t remember what they did… yesterday.
I’m with the latter.
Throughout the last couple of years, I seem to either take a while to remember what happened the day(s) before or just forget it completely. I’d sometimes even forget what happened hours or minutes ago. People would tell me stuff and I’d occasionally forget them just as easily. I know it sounds bad, but I don’t do it on purpose. There are days when I wish I had a better memory so I wouldn’t constantly doubt myself over things that were or weren’t said and done.
I wonder if I have selective memory… if that’s even real. I’m able to bring up certain obscure memories that shock others, but I don’t exactly know why I remember them.
As I was looking at photos taken from when I was an infant until my 6th-grade promotional ceremony, I realized how little I remember of the events behind those photos. As I scour my thoughts for more memories before college, I honestly can’t remember much.
And, the memories that I can recall are mostly embarrassing ones that, ironically, I want to forget.
Oh well.
Thankfully, my earliest memory, or memories, isn’t embarrassing. I’m writing about two instances that I believe happened when I was about four or five years old, but I can’t remember which happened first.
My First Early Memory
My first early memory happened when I was playing with my bike in front of my old house. There was a pile of tiny white rocks that the grownups were to use for some construction project. I believe it was the day before or the day that I was watching TV, and I saw someone doing a wheelie trick on their bike. A wheelie happens when you balance on the back wheel of your bike while the front wheel is up in the air. Some manage to take this trick even further and continue riding the bike in this position.
I can assume you already know where this is going.
I don’t even know why I decided to do this trick in a rocky area – or even at all, at that young age.
Anyway, I was trying to do a wheelie, without a helmet I might add, and at some point, I fell all the way back and hit my head on the ground. I don’t remember being sent to the hospital, or how much blood poured out, if at all. I only remember crying on my mom’s lap as she placed a bag of ice on my head.
Thankfully, this incident never stopped me from biking again as I eventually got my own two-wheeled bike and went on a ton of fun bike rides throughout the neighborhood.
My Second Early Memory
My second early memory is more on the sweeter side of things… I think.
I remember even less of it.
I was at school; it was nap time. I remember being woken from my nap because my dad came to pick me up from school. I wasn’t sure if it was because school ended, and he was just there to pick me up on time, or if I was picked up while there were still hours of school left.
Either way, the memory that stuck with me was that I was hugging my boy classmate when I was woken up from my nap. I can’t remember if he was hugging me back, but we were facing each other. We were pretty close that time and he was very sweet; however, we lost complete contact with each other when I transferred to another school. Somehow he was always in my memory as I grew up, and I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we had kept contact throughout the years.
Wherever he is right now and whatever he is doing, I wish him the best and all the happiness he deserves.
So, these are my earliest memories. I do wish I could remember more that way if my future child(ren) were to ask what my childhood was like, I’d have actual stories to tell instead of “I don’t remember” moments. The more I think about it, the more I realize how sad it is not to be able to remember so many happy memories from the past, not even from a glance. As much as I enjoy creating new memories, I would be ecstatic to be able to remember the fun times of my childhood.
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What is one (or some) of your earliest memories?
