Creating Memories

What does it mean when your first memory is a lie? Can your life start that way without it completely messing you up?

When I was 18 months old, I broke my arm. Until I was 13 years old, I thought that my arm broke after I had fallen off the couch on our porch. In fact, I remembered it happening - I can still picture the tile floor coming closer to my face as I fell.

Then, on the day my oldest brother got married, I learned the truth. My brother is 8 years older than me so he must have been 9 at the time I broke my arm. He was 22 on the day he got married and I was 13, going on 14. My brother had just graduated from college and was marrying a woman whose family was much stronger in their religious faith than ours. At that point he had not completely given himself over to God, like he has now, but perhaps their influence caused him to feel the need to tell me what really happened 11 years before...

The funny thing is that I don't have a clear memory of the conversation that my brother and I had on his wedding day. I just remember that he finally came clean and told me and my mother - and maybe our other siblings too - that he had been carrying me that day - probably I was squirming - and he dropped me on the floor in the porch. I must have screamed pretty loud because he took off running so fast that he broke the screen door off its hinges. He ran all the way down the street. I don't know what happened next. I have some pictures of me in a cast and somehow they feel like a memory but that's where the story ends.

The Idea Is This...

I've had this idea of writing a book - yes, it sounds cliche - but I have all of these memories, stories from my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. I would hate to forget them and some of them are kind of funny.

I have scraps of paper all around my house with a phrase or a sentence that I keep meaning to put into some format. Maybe this is the best use of a blog. Then when I think of a story, I can just blog it and then at least I've recorded the memory somewhere. I like this idea. I think it could work. And, probably I'll have to write about the cute and funny things that my kids do...

To Blog or Not to Blog

Why the heck am I doing this? Who is going to read it anyway? Do I really want people to read stuff that I write? Am I just trying to empty some excess garbage out of my head to make room for something else, and if so, what might I start to collect?

I probably shouldn't be writing a blog. I could get in trouble if I say the wrong things about people - and I am always the person who gets caught talking trash about someone while they are walking up behind me.

Maybe I should be specific about what I will and won't write about here - I won't, for example, blog about people who annoy me at work - it's much too easy for people to figure out that I am talking about them. But, isn't that sort of the point of the faceless blog? You get to whine about whatever you want and no one knows it's about them - until they connect you with the blog and then the poop hits the oscillator...

I just read former Gawker editor, Emily Gould's New York Times Magazine article, "Exposed" and boy does that scare me. I lead a much more boring life than Emily ever will but to put yourself out there completely on your blog - why not just walk around naked? or wearing a sandwich board that tells people what you think of them and how many lovers you've had (and what you really think of them)?

Thankfully, I am insignificant and no one is going to be all that interested in what I have to say about things. So, I should just consider this a writing exercise to sharpen my wit and lose the cliches and not worry so much about who is(n't) watching. I'm willing to bet that if I actually do keep this up and try to write often, I will come back to this post and be really embarrassed by my own self.