From My First Conscious Memory to My Last Unconscious Thought.

My first conscious memory is that of a botched crib escape.  I remember hurdling the side and clinging to the jail bar like wooden dowels of my crib.  This was before I had any real experience with pain (well maybe that circumcision) and so the idea of free falling seemed natural enough. 

Now even though the thought of sudden impact didn’t phase me at the time, I was smart enough to know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line (I have a sneaking suspicion that I wouldn’t have defined it quite as well back then).  Thus, wanting to be on the floor, I let go.  And as a Winnie the Pooh throw rug exerted a reaction force on my face, I came to realize three things: gravity, pain, and that funny smell that carpets have.  Since then my life has been a series of events much like this one.  (Prepare yourself for the incomplete sentence that follows.)  I do something stupid, (jumped from the heights of my crib), I find out something that everybody else seems to know but me (acceleration due to gravity), I experience pain (thud), and I make a mental note of what seems to be important but really isn’t (the scent of a pet embedded in carpet fibers. Actually, it is the scent not the pet that is embedded in carpet fibers). 

A good example of this was when I discovered suction.  I remember brushing my teeth before going to bed one night.  This was when the pump-style toothpaste dispensers just came out and I was fascinated by the new design.  I was particularly intrigued by the new larger cap.  Sometime in the next few moments I discovered that by placing the cap over my mouth I could suck it to my face.  Boy was this entertaining!  I must have sucked on that thing for twenty minutes.  But like all good things, I had to end my Olympic style cap sucking and go to bed.  The next morning when my mother woke me up I found out why I was the only competitor in my new found sport.  You see sucking something to your face obeys the same laws of physics and biology that hickie giving does.  I effectively gave myself a two inch diameter hickie centered on my lips!  There was a purple ring around my mouth that made my lips appear to be three times their normal size.  At first, my mother thought I was attacked by some kind of mutant lip leech during the night.  After I explained to her what had transpired the night before, she found it quite humorous.   However, she didn’t find it so funny when I told someone that the reason my lips were so big was that my mother hit me in the face with a bowling pin. 

So from this I discovered suction, endured the humiliation of having lips three times their normal size, and found out that if something isn’t an Olympic event then there’s a good reason. 

And so my life continues in much the same manner today.  About the only difference now is that the loss of money has a place in this cycle of events.

© Pico Twang