Memory

I learned in my Intro to Psychology class in college that any memories before the age of five are suspect and probably constructed from what someone else told you about the events you "remember." While I enjoyed most of the class very much, I thought this was a load of crap. I have many memories before the age of five, and I remember details that no one taold me.

When I was two years old, my family (meaning my parents and I) lived in a converted boarding house. We lived upstairs for a while, then downstairs. Sometimes we shared the house with family friends, other times with a psychotic woman who sang "There is a Balm in Gilead" while her children screamed. Apparently, when we lived downstairs, some women lived in the room above my room, and they used to wake me up having loud, screaming sex with different guys every night. I don't remember that (although I do remember their coming over and introducing themselves when they moved in; they seemed nice).

What I do remember about that house is playing outside. When I was five or six, we moved to a less nice neighborhood, and I played outside less frequently. But I played outside all day at this house. The neighbors next door seem to have changed about as often as those up- or downstairs. The first neighbors I remember are Adam and Bobbi-Jo. We used to ride bikes in the driveway between our houses. They had a big-wheel. I had Bucky the Wonder Horse. He had a red saddle that you could lift and he had a storage compartment inside. In case, I guess, I wanted to load him up with coffee and baked beans and ride off into the sunset.

Sometimes we would play in the backyard. Later, a family with older kids would move in and monopolize it, but at this point, we could go back there. One feature of this backyard was a cellar door leading to the house's basement (on a side note, J.R.R. Tolkein said that "cellar door" was the most beautiful word in the English language). The door couldn't have stood more than two feet at its highest point, but to my two-year-old mind, it was an Everest that must be scaled (sadly, I had no rain barrel to slide down).

I remember one day playing in the backyard with Adam and Bobbi-Jo. My mom was there somewhere, gardening or something, and I began to climb the doors. But on this particular day, something was different: one of the cellar doors was open. As I was climbing the closed door, I began to teeter. My top-heavy frame (which is larger now, but still top-heavy) fell through the open door and rolled down a flight of cement steps before coming to a stop on the cold basement floor. the next thing I remember is sitting in the kitchen, screaming while my mom slapped Band-Aids on my owies. This I remember vividly. The kitchen was yellow, and the sun was streaming through the big window. The light was so bright and the room so yellow that it felt like sitting in the sun. Then, someone knocked on the door. It was Adam. he had retrieved the rattle that I dropped and brought it to me, knowing it would make me feel better. It wasn't a normal rattle, nothing Tweedle-Dee and Dum would have fought over. It was like one of those bead mazes you find in dentist waiting rooms or church nurseries, only straight, and it had different brightly colored blocks on it. Because no one climbs a mountain without a staff.

Thinking back on the event now, I realize that my mom was around the age I am now. I can't imagine how I would respond to my child falling into a cement basement. But she apparently did OK, because, while I remember the event clearly, I'm not scarred by it.

Take that, Psychology.