I was born just like everyone else. My parents had sex, which resulted in my mom getting pregnant and eventually giving birth to me. If you let my mom tell the story (which she often did when I was a child), she said I was so tiny that I could fit in the palm of her hand. I was two months premature. I guess I wanted to come early so I could have my birthday in the same week as my brother and sister... Yep, I'm the youngest of three. We all have our birthdays within 4 days of each other, in the same month.
My mother would often tell me that I was born with a hole in my lungs. As a child, I tried to understand this, but all I kept thinking is, 'How am I breathing if I have a hole in my lungs?' She never finished with, 'Oh, but it healed within the first month,' so for a long time, I thought I still had a hole in my lungs. Thanks, Mom, for freaking me out... Lol.
​
I don't remember my birth, as most of us don't. The first memory I do have is waking up in the middle of the night (I must have been 4). I woke up, sat up, and asked myself out loud, 'What was I supposed to do?' This is probably the single most important memory that I have, which would cause me to constantly think about it for years to come. I even answered with, 'Oh, yeah,' and went back to sleep. But I didn't hear any answer, and this would cause me to think, 'What could the answer be?' I know the answer now, but you aren't ready to hear that yet. I will tell it in another story later. This also might have been the catalyst for my fascination with reading philosophy in my teens. But before we get there, there is another reason for my philosophical mind, which comes when I am 10 years old.
​
My memories start to sink in at the age of 4. Another story my mother told me once: We had a small hole in our screen door to the backyard. It was about head height to me at that age. She told me, 'That hole is from you. You ran through the screen door.' Now let me tell you something. It is important to use the right words to describe things to children as young as 4. I took the words literally. I thought, 'I ran all the way through the screen door, but how did I only leave a small hole?' I thought to myself, 'I can't fit through that hole. It's only as big as my fist.' This boggled my mind at that age. Again, I was forced to think hard about the possibility of my body fitting through a small hole in a screen door where I supposedly ran through it. LOL. You've got to love the descriptive nature of how things are perceived.
This is how I felt every morning growing up as a child.
We lived in a cul-de-sac. It was 1975, and all the kids would play with each other outside. There were perhaps six of us around the same age as my siblings and me, with a couple of older kids. One of them had stilts that I wanted to try standing on but never did. I also wanted my own sit-and-spin, but one of the kids had it, so I would spin myself silly on his. I only remember doing it once, though.
I was afraid of Halloween. My mother would dress up as a witch. Here's a picture where I refused to stand
in front of her. I also remember a
house during trick-or-treating
that had a Frankenstein mask
popping out of a sleeping bag on
their front lawn. I refused to go
up to that house because, in my
mind, that Frankenstein was
going to get up out of the sleeping
bag and chase me. Oh, the joys
of being afraid as a child.
​
Then, there was the time I was outside playing with my best friend at the time, Bridgett, a girl who was also four years old. I told her I needed to go inside to poop. She told me, 'No! Poop in the bushes, and I will block you. No one will see you.' In front of my house, we had some tall bushes that made a square little out-cove. I sat in there while she put her arms up and spread her legs out like a big X. As I began to poop, my brother and his friend started walking down the street toward us. They saw and began to laugh. My brother said he was going to tell our parents, and I felt ashamed and embarrassed.
​
Speaking of poop, there was a time when I was around three years old. I was standing on the brick platform in front of our fireplace when I felt a small round poo ball roll down my pants to the floor. My memory gets a bit hazy here because I remember going to my parents right after that and telling them we had to move to a new house, but I didn't tell them why. In my head, I thought, 'I can't live in a house with poop on the fireplace.' The strange thing is that when I think of telling my parents we needed to move, I also have in my head that we needed to move to a two-story house so the witch outside my window couldn't get me. It makes me laugh every time I think of that one. But I'm not sure if the idea of a witch outside my bedroom window came from my brother telling me about his fear or if it was solely mine. The witch, when I think of it, was on a broomstick flying. We lived in a one-story house, and it never occurred to me that the witch could fly up to a second-story window. Anyway, we did end up moving when I was five years old. I thought it was because I told them we had to. That made me happy.
Before moving, I would see the thing that grossed me out and every time I think of it...I want to puke. There was a family looking at our house that had a little girl maybe 3 or 4. I remember looking into her eyes as she picks a huge juicy booger from her nose and........ate it! I feel sick just telling it. LOL
