My Life and Times, part 8: My Earliest Memories

When I was in grad school I had a friend who needed to go for psychological counseling. When she returned, she told me that the first thing he asked her was to try to recall her earliest three memories, that he could determine a lot about a person’s memories by those recollections.

At the time, I did not pay much heed to it, but now, many decades later, since I have been writing this autobiographical thread for my blog, I have begun searching through the dim recesses of my mind for my earliest memories. I can distinctly remember four early events in my life which occurred prior to or during first grade. And all those memories have one thing in common: my cousin Rita was part of them.

She’s really more than my cousin. We grew up in a two-story house. Her family lived downstairs, while my family lived upstairs. She was the same age as me and, consequently, was my closest friend for my entire childhood. Sure I played sports with my two brothers (before my third brother was even born yet), but Rita was my closest friend until the end of high school when our families moved to different houses. So it is not surprising she was part of all my earliest memories.

One of these memories will embarrass Rita totally, but I’m sure her family will get a good laugh out of it, should they read this blog. So here are my four earliest memories. Keep in mind that some of the facts are probably a bit distorted by time, so Rita might recall them somewhat differently than I do.

1. Rita had a favorite doll named Ginger. But as all beloved toys do, Ginger gradually fell apart until she was so decrepit that Rita decided she was dead. So we had a very serious funeral ceremony, attended by Rita, me, and the two neighborhood sisters Trish and Kathy Coyle, with whom Rita and I were very friendly (until they moved to Detroit; how dare they!), highlighted by the actual burial itself in one of our garbage cans.

2. Rita and I, with our respective mothers, were visiting our ailing grandmother in nearby West New York when she had a sudden heart attack. Suddenly there were dozens (or at least it seemed to us) of police cars and ambulances in front of the building, sirens blaring, lights rotating through the windows of the living room on the second floor where we were, police running up and down the stairs. We were both so terrified we hid behind the couch in the living room until all the frantic activity finally ended.

3. I need to describe the setup of our house here. The rooms were in a row. If you entered the back door–which is the way we always entered and exited–you entered the kitchen, then next came the dining room, followed by the living room and, finally, the sun porch. On the left side of the dining room was a short hallway with a bedroom and a bathroom. The bathroom could be seen from the dining room. So one day I went downstairs looking for Rita and, as I entered the dining room, she called my name. I turned my head and saw her sitting on the toilet with the bathroom door open. Seeing me looking, she stood up, turned around and mooned me!

4. We attended a Catholic grammar school and, trying to be as polite as possible, I will just say that the nuns were brutal. One day, our first grade teacher (Sister Ann? I am not even sure of her name anymore) was so upset with the class that she told us she was locking us in the classroom overnight. And sure enough, at the end of the day, she locked the classroom door and went home. Being well-regimented Catholic kids in the 1950s, we did not even leave our seats, but the entire class sat there crying our eyes out, thinking we were trapped overnight. Obviously, she returned a short while later and, lesson being learned, let us leave. Nowadays she would be fired, and probably prosecuted for such cruelty. In that era, I assume she and her fellow witches had a good laugh over it.

So anybody feel like psychoanalyzing me based on those memories, lol?