I am losing my memory

I am noticing that my childhood is leaving me slowly, the many memories I once had fading. What do I remember of being a child anymore? It's a strange feeling having the sense of my lifetime dwindling, even as I'm living it, like a candle burning from both ends.

I've long recognized that I remember much more of my childhood than most other people. For a long time I felt this was one of those unspoken but definitive characteristics by which people are classified. I imagined that for those who could not remember their childhood, their conscious memory is of being relatively adult. They recall having popped into existence, say age ten, and charging forth into the world to create a destiny for themselves. This is how I imagine the experience. I can't be sure. But I have polled people throughout my life, friends and acquaintances, and have noticed that those of us who recall those many long years at the whim of the giants surrounding us--we are different. It's not that we have lived longer in a sense or are more experienced per se, but we recall being so utterly helpless that we used to poke ourselves in the eye. It's almost like a memory of an entirely alternate existence. When I see a baby with red eyeballs from poking itself in the eye accidentally, I don't think, oh looky wooky it's a little pumpkin; I think: you poor bastard. That sucks.

The introduction into human existence is one of prolonged inability and powerlessness, a struggle for mastery even of the muscles in one's arm. And after this introduction, the story which begins to unfold is of such a different quality that it is almost a completely different story. Or, at least, one would like to believe this is so. It has occurred to me before that most people don't remember their childhood because of a compulsion to suppress it, and they've blocked it out. Or perhaps it simply seems so irrelevant because it's so divorced from the realities of daily life that one forgets it, like algebra. Sure there are those people who remember algebra and insist that it's useful in their daily lives, but for the rest of us who have dutifully forgotten it, this is a rumor told by eighth-grade teachers. It's a lie perpetuated by the minority of people for whom the math of daily living might mean something, the people for whom eighth grade was relevant.

I remember being prelinguistic and understanding a good bit of what adults said. I remember my mother had a friend with a baby boy, and she would bring him over and we would 'play.' I hated him. I hate hate hated him. He would chase me and I would crawl as fast as I possibly could, with him trailing after me, and when he would catch me he would pull my hair until I screamed and screamed, and then the adults would come running, wondering what might possibly have happened. Trapped in my inarticulate state, I would cry and cry. I would look at him and wonder if he knew I hated him. One day, it occured to me to pull his hair back. It's strange what a grandiose leap this was. Of course I was caught, and my mother was shamed, but none of this mattered to me in the slightest. The hateful boy went away. It was wonderful. I remember other discoveries as startling and amazing.

When it was time to take baby pictures, and my parents would dress me up and take me to the mall, and some lady would have funny little puppets and toys to rattle, and as soon as I forgot and smiled, she would take a picture and the bright light would scare me and hurt my eyes, and I would start screaming and crying. And then she would hold up the toy to take another picture, and I would look at her with total incredulity, like really? You think I'm going to fall for that again? And then she would switch toys, and I would be amazed by the new one. And then I realized, she's just using different toys for the same evil purpose! Don't be fooled by the new shiny object! The flash will still come and hurt your eyes! Don't smile, look away look away--

I remember the epic long hours in preschool, trying to kill boredom. What happens if you eat sand? What happens if you run around in circles really fast? What happens if you punch little Billy in the face? I remember talking to a stranger and the teacher yelling at me, and the stranger and I both turned to the teacher and yelled back at the same time. He's on the other side of a fence. What's he going to do?

And that one evil daycare teacher that caught me stealing a piece of tape, and her cop boyfriend was coming in to talk to us that day anyway, so she lied to me and told me he was coming to arrest me and take me away. And he came and talked about how cops are nice to little kids and they're around to help, and told us that prisoners don't really eat bread and water. And then she told him what she had said to me, and how I'd cried and cried, and he told her that was a horrible thing to do and he broke up with her. And I was like, snap. Take that. Oh wait, I still have to see you every freakin day.

What memories have I forgotten? Which ones have already passed into the ether? When you forget them all, do you breed?

I had a conversation about childhood memories with a friend who could dimly recall his own birth and we discussed the one truly blessed thing about having had a terrible childhood, which is that everything else is pretty awesome by comparison. Any day, no matter how bad, I can always think, at least I'm not two years old. That sucked.