Do You Remember The Time?

I’ve been reading a collection of witty, disillusioned stories of childhood and life by Hyperbole and A Half blogger, Allie. Not my usual kind of text to loose myself in, but her dry humour and misshapenly apt illustrations have captured my amazement. Still, what has been most amazing to me has been her recollections from when she was like, four years old.

How is this possible?

Is she some weird Jedi robot or am I just suffering from long-term amnesia? I don’t even know which is considered normal - to remember your stumbling toddler years or not. So in an effort to not work myself into a panic about whether or not I was normal, I’ve tried to recollect my earliest memory.

I think I’ve managed to go back to when I was about 3/4 years old. But this might not even be right cause I can’t remember the day exactly, more like I remember my mum (or aunty?) showing me a picture when I was older and giving me some commentary. So yes, this might be cheating.

Anyway, the picture was a cute (if I do say so myself), chubby faced little me, sitting in a white gown surrounded by toys - a white aeroplane here, a brown teddy bear there, and an array of other tidbits I bet I was excited about given how I was clutching some of them while totally ignoring the dotting photographer.

I can barely even remember the commentary accompanying that photo, but I imagine I could hear the excitement in my mum/aunty’s voice when she talked about it. It was undoubtedly the first party we’d had in the house, at least for a long long time, and I was the star of the show given all the tokens of material love scattered around me.

I don’t think I’ve ever had such an elaborate birthday bash ever again (unless I’ve had one and completely forgotten about it) so it’s a shame I don’t remember it. But I’m going to go ahead and assume that I felt like the most important baby in the world.

Childhood memories are a weird thing because surely, those experiences are part of what has made me who I am today - but I remember literally none of them. How can something that must have helped to shape a whole personality be promptly forgotten? Or have I forgotten them because they didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things? That can’t be right though, cause some things inevitably would have mattered, but I can’t remember anything past perhaps nine years old.

Hmm! Could a visit to a hypnotist help? Let me think about it.