Thinking About: My Childhood

I may have mentioned before that I have few memories of my early years. In fact I can remember very little of my life before I reached puberty. It crossed my mind, at least for a while, that maybe I had suffered some kind of abuse and that I had blocked out whole chunks of my early life because I really didn’t want to remember them. On further reflection I decided that I simply wasn’t paying that much attention to things happening around me.

My earliest memory was I think my first day at school so I must have been 4 or 5. It’s only the briefest of things but it does seem very vivid even today. I can only imagine that I must have literally sleep-walked through the first 4 years of my life and only had the briefest of awakenings after that until I had enough testosterone in my bloodstream to keep my brain active enough to record events in my day-to-day existence. I certainly remember a number of incidents in the 7-10 year age range including almost being killed by a speeding car. That’s the kind of thing you tend to remember long after the event itself. I also had my first encounters with girls around then so things got a little more vivid for me.

It was only really after I started High school at age 11 that I started laying down regular memories. I know that I had a huge crush on the girl next door that, fortunately, never really went anywhere. I really dodged a bullet there. I remember being bullied early on but that passed as the bullies and I went our separate ways. I remember good friends and good times and the girls I wanted who didn’t want me. It was all very teen angst cliché territory but it was intense enough to lay down some pretty solid memories.

Maybe that’s my early years in a nutshell – nothing much actually happened, at least anything much worth remembering. Maybe I was just a happy little soul who went through each day doing basic animal things like eating, shitting and sleeping without a care (or thought) to interrupt things. Thinking back on it maybe it was simply the case that there was nothing that bad to remember. OK, maybe there was nothing that good to remember either but I’d take that over a violent or abusive childhood any day!

I have some very early photographs of me and my brother that must have been taken in the early 1960’s. I look really cute in shorts with my cropped blond hair. I have no recollection of the snaps being taken or little idea of where they were taken. They look like a park of some kind but which one I’ll probably never know. It does feel kind of odd not having, or at least remembering, your roots. Maybe that explains why I’m never planning on ever moving back to the place of my birth (which really shocked someone I chatted to at the wedding I went to recently). It’s because I have no memory of growing up there. Maybe that explains why I’m pretty happy living anywhere and why I hardly ever feel homesick. Maybe without the clutter of early childhood memories I have more room for interesting stuff. If only I can find some interesting stuff to remember……