Earliest Memory

The earliest memory I have is being in Oklahoma for some trip. I was three. We we were outside a bar, and it was very bare country around us. My dad was pulling my hand towards the car and on the concerete lot in front of the bar, I saw a turtle. To me at the time, it was the size of a dinner plate. I shreiked "Turtle!" and it took a while for my dad to actually turn and acknowledge my excited tugging. A young-ish couple were outside, and the guy picked it up, turned it over and let me stroke its shell.

I had this dream when I was four or five. I think I must have been wondering if I remembered being born. In the dream I was born and I got off the steel table thing and started walking around. I was wearing a diaper. The doctor was wearing a ponytail. I walked down the hall, and sitting on a chair was a woman with curly black hair and a green coat. She was holding a ziplock baggie with chocolate chip cookies. She smiled, gave me one and I woke up.

I was stung by a bee on the eyebrow when I was four. We were running up the steps to my aunt Elaine's house in Great Falls and there was this bush with a perpetual droning of bees. Because of this, it was customary to run as fast as possible into the house and this time I was last and happened to get stung. I erupted in tears, and my cousin Lannie got me in the house and put this white goop from an orange container on my eyebrow. I remember having to walk around County Market this way. The next day i woke up to watch cartoons and noticed that my eye had swelled shut. So the whole day I ran around pretending I was a pirate.

I remember one day staring at the piano and thinking about how two years ago, the year was 1994

I remember this one baby sitter when I was four. Her name was Vida and I really disliked her. She cooked this lunch (if you can call it such) that was a mixture of hamburger, corn and ugh. There was muffins for dessert and she told me I could have one, but I couldn't have two unless I cleaned my plate. I tried to tough it out, but I soon gave up. She gave me a muffin, and when I finished it, I chewed on the wrapper so greedily, she said "that's disgusting" and ended up giving me another one.

On the first day of kindergarten I remember wondering why we all had name tags when none of us could read...