Aging Gracelessly: It Begins

Life always starts out a bit hazy, doesn't it? This could be largely due to the fact that the brain is still pretty soft and squishy - it hasn't had time to set. The brain is exactly like jello, and I've seen a number of horror films that thoroughly back up the science on this assertion - it's irrefutable... don't even try!

I'm not sure I remember much before the age of 2 or 3. I catch snippets and glimpses, which are mostly of me getting into trouble. I suppose this is typical, as memories burn both brighter and deeper during stress. In one of my earliest memories, I vaguely recall playing with two ceramic knick knacks (I think they were... snakes?) as if they were drumsticks. They made such a good clinky clanky noise when you banged them together, at least they did until I broke them into several pieces and my dear Mother transformed into Angry Mother. One should never summon Angry Mother.

Another time, my Father was playing an active part in a vicious conspiracy between Himself, Mother, and Doctor to make me drink vile bright yellow liquids to ensure that I hated all three of them forever and ever. I had to drink the foul medicine every few hours for absolutely no reason whatsoever, which is why it made perfect sense to me to express my displeasure by spitting the liquid out onto my Father's jeans while he was wearing them. Let me just say - one should never summon Angry Father.

You learn so many things in the first ten years of life - more things than you can count. You even learn to count! I couldn't possibly put everything into a single blog entry - I would bore you to death! So instead, I shall attempt to provide the highlights. Here is a list of just *some* of the things I learned:

 

• Multiplication tables
• How to spell vegetable but not how to enjoy one
• How to tie my shoes
• How to sit-up, crawl, talk and walk
  
• How to ride a bike
• How *not* to ride a bike
• How the solar system is like a desk lamp surrounded by sports equipment
• That I hate vaccinations more than anything
• That parents can go to Hawaii without me and leave me with grandparents
• That I can hold a grudge for a very long time (Hawaii?? Really?!?)
• How to read
• How to roller skate
• That play-doh does not taste very good
• That my mother dislikes the noise of a vigorously squeezed balloon so much... that she will pop it
• That parents fight and yell at each other
• That parents can be hurt in car accidents
• That staples can go right through your thumbnail and thumb and poke out the other side
• That stubbornness can achieve victory if you're willing to endure long enough
• That children are cruel and I was no exception
• How to swim, and to fear YMCA swim instructors and cold water forever
  
• That you should never approach a cat on all fours while growling and barking
• That I love video games
• That an american space station might fall on me
• That corduroy pants are not acceptable attire in school
• That I don't fit in or make friends easily
• That I don't respond well to ridicule
• That random acts of vandalism and theft can happen
• That standing on a metal floor heating grate while barefoot is "hot godammit", even when you don't know many words
  
• That a president can be voted out of office even if your parents voted for him
• How to lie
• That fluoride treatments were designed to torture children
• That scary images on television were real when I went to sleep
• That stealing is wrong

In those early years, it was the age of absolutes. Everything was life and death (even ice cream), love or hate, and patience was a word that had no meaning. At the age of four, a week was .5% of my life - the equivalent of nearly three months at my current age. Everything took forever, and everyone was 15 times bigger than me, and they were always telling me what to do, how to act, where to sit. The world was a scary mish-mosh of colors and shapes, and things I just didn't understand - but it would have been even scarier without the trustable perfect parents by my side.

School provided structure both to my life and apparently for my brain, as I remember everything pretty chronologically from about kindergarten onward. Clear memories of trying to walk home from school on a shortened day in the 1st grade, comforted by my iron clad logic that the barren field in front of my school looked exactly the same as the one by my house, so it must therefore be the same field. When my father finally found me a couple blocks from home (hours later? time is still skewed at this age), I didn't understand his panic. I was *obviously* fine.

I remember breaking my arm around that same time - the very unhappy look on the girl's face that I crashed into as I fell from the monkey bars. I never did find out if *she* got hurt too. Waiting impatiently in the nurse's office for my mother to pick me up - the angry throbbing pain in my arm, while laughable now (hairline fracture), was absolutely unbearable. Literally the worst pain I had ever experienced... so far.

And I remember learning to lie. Perhaps getting into it the worst by the third grade. I also remember the consequences of getting caught in a lie, although perhaps I learned the wrong moral to that story (don't get caught!).

When I was eight, we moved to Los Angeles. In a blink... I lost all my friends, all social context, and was thrust into a "highly gifted" program in a monumental effort on the part of my parents to keep me properly educated, and to keep me from turning into a sociopathic serial killer. Spoiler alert: they were mostly successful. By the age of ten I was solidly ensconced into the culture of Los Angeles (if there really is such a thing), and was well on my way to becoming a well-adjusted, high functioning, valuable member of society. This was all, of course, before puberty struck... and ruined everything.

Stay tuned for part two of: Aging Gracelessly