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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Somewhat Incomplete Autobiography

Part One:  Gestation to Year 2

Nothing comes to mind. 

Part Two:  Years 2 to 3

I’m standing and hiding, hiding and peeking out from under a kitchen table.  My parents, who are sitting at the table (I can see their legs and feet) are finding this pretty amusing.  Me, too.  I think my standing, hiding and peeking skills are pretty good. (In retrospect, I still think that standing and hiding and peeking out from under kitchen tables would be fun.  I think I would still be good at it. I regret only that I’ve gotten so tall and old.) 

I’m running, running, and I run into something… a clothesline, oh shit.  I’m strangled, I fall down.  I was looking at my brother’s books in his room and thought it would be fun to push them all into his bookshelf until their ends hit the back.  (In retrospect, it WAS fun, and whenever I’m trying to adjust books on a bookshelf I have to restrain myself from pushing them all in until their ends hit the back.) I guess my brother didn’t like the uneven effect of the front and that’s why he’s chased me.  Cobblestones, grass, clothesline. Mom yelling. I can breathe again eventually.  Don’t ask me what the clothesline was doing down so low, but it was. 

My parents have taken me to some Function.  There was a Christmas Tree.  I have been forced, against my will, to eat a banana, in addition to god knows what else.  Now we’re in the car, on the way home, and I’m in the back seat.  I don’t feel so good. My dad holds his cupped hand back for me, and I vomit banana gunk into it while he drives.  My mother is beside him in the passenger seat.  They are both very calm about this.  I think how incredibly brave they are.  I would never hold my hand out for someone to vomit into.

I’m riding one of those mechanical horses outside a food shopping center while we wait for my dad.  My mother is bored, but I’m liking this.  I wanted her to put a coin in, and she has relented.  Mom is mom.  (In retrospect, it’s obvious that my mother was trying to alleviate MY boredom, and I’m thinking:  this would work for me now, while waiting for anyone outside almost anywhere.)

My mother is wiping my bum after I have gone poo.  I think how incredibly gross poo is, and how incredibly brave it is of my mother to wipe my bum like this.  She’s very calm about it.  I will never be able to wipe my own bum.  I am overcome with trepidation at the prospect of having to actually do it in the future, by myself. 

My mother is forcing me to drink some brutal concoction called “Tiger’s Milk”.  It consists of milk, a raw egg, and some molasses.  She says that it’s good for me.  It’s a sunny kitchen and I’m choking it down because it’s good for me.  Like I have a choice.

Author’s note:  Most of this seems to be a matter of either joy, or trauma.  I wish I could remember what happened in Part One.  Horrible nasty pushy parents, forcing me to be alive.