Defragging My Childhood Hard Drive

(Disclaimer: The incidents in the article are meant to be recollections from the perspective of a child aged 0-6. They may not be 100% accurate, which is the point of the article to begin with. No children were actually harmed in the publishing of this story)

Childhood memories are strange things, but parents who work tirelessly to forge those memories for their children might be even stranger.

It’s kind of sad when you look at that from the perspective of the parents. Here you are, trying your best to give your little pre-school kids memories that last a lifetime, yet in the end who knows what they’ll remember? Your legacy as a parent is really at the mercy of a few scattered moments. I recently searched the deepest recesses of my 40+ year old brain in an attempt to uncover my earliest memory...it was a long, painful process, equivalent to defragging a 40GB hard drive in search of missing or corrupt sectors. By my recollection, the earliest memory I can retrieve from my dusty old brain is a very vague remembrance of my grandfather's funeral when I was 5 years old in 1973. I'm pretty sure one of my crazy uncles allowed me to illegally sit on his lap and hold the steering wheel of the van while driving on a highway to the cemetery. That is definitely the farthest back my memory bank will go. Everything before that is a default. Maybe I had some good times with my family from ages 0-5, maybe my parents took me to some cool places and did some fun and exciting things with me, but really...who knows? All I can do is take their word for it. About all I know for sure is, I survived those years...that's about it.

Beyond my earliest memory of my grandfather’s funeral, I do have some kindergarten memories...but only of the strangest events. For instance, I remember a kid named Jerry Gray, who somehow managed to stab himself with a pencil somewhere near his eye. My classmates were screaming, my teacher was in panic mode...and blood was definitely a prominent part of that memory.

And then I remember nap time. I grew up in an era in which kindergarten teachers were allowed to take an extended coffee break for themselves and force their energetic students to take mandatory naps. I don't know how long these naps were, and I highly doubt any child ever actually fell asleep, but I do remember we each had a little rug to sleep on and we could lay it wherever we wanted to on the floor. I was apparently a frisky 5 year old because I definitely remember purposely positioning my little brown rug directly in front of my very attractive kindergarten teacher's desk so I could stare at her legs. Saddest day of my life was when I discovered that Miss McGinness wasn't going to be my teacher EVERY year. So those are my earliest memories...a little blood, a death, and some skin. Sounds more like a cheap B-movie than a childhood, if you ask me, but that's all the material I have to work with.

But then there are my earliest memories of my mom and dad. I'm not quite sure how to put this delicately, especially since they're both still alive and well, but if we were just going by the evidence saved in my earliest memories, my parents would either be locked up in prison somewhere serving life sentences as abusive parents, or at the very least they would have been stripped of custody of all 5 of their children by DEFAX. I'm sure both mom and dad had loving moments with me, after all, there are a few old picture slides which show me looking pretty happy, and the pictures look genuine enough...but the core of my earliest memories only seem to recall some horrible moments. For instance, there was the time my brothers and I got in big trouble for innocently walking a few miles down the creek in our backyard without telling anyone about it. What should have been a real brotherly-bonding, "Huck Finn" type adventure for us instead turned into one of the harshest parental yellings ever heaped upon unsuspecting children in the history of the world. I COULD tell you the punishment we received from that incident, because that I DO remember, but it would probably result in the FBI hunting down my father like he was some sort of war criminal...so I'll spare him that humiliation.

Then, painfully, I remember that my parents, for whatever unknown reason, did not sign me up to play ice hockey when I was 6 years old...even though my 2 older brothers were allowed to continue playing, and even though I had just earned a trophy for "Most Improved Player" the previous season. As a classic middle child always struggling with feelings of neglect, I can tell you I'm still in therapy to this day for this sad injustice. In fact, the reason I'm still playing hockey today, as a 43 year old adult, is just to prove to my parents that they should have never pulled me out of hockey.

And finally, in very general terms, I'm fairly confident that my mom yelled at me or my siblings for something each and every day of my childhood, and only took a break from yelling at us when my dad pulled into the driveway, at which point she provided him with the daily report and a litany of all of our wrongdoings...and then HE resumed the yelling where she left off. Again, if we're just going by my vague early memories, this is the way it happened in my childhood.

Of course, I'm willing to acknowledge today that there may be some holes to these stories. Maybe my memory has exaggerated some of these details. I'm not a psychologist, but I would venture a guess that traumatic, or really negative memories probably stick out amongst the endless stream of repetitive joyous and happy memories. The bad memories may linger in our dusty old brains for years and years and shape some of our childhood stories, but those joyous and happy memories are really what form our lives.

As parents of 3 boys, while running ourselves completely ragged in ridiculous efforts to forge an endless stream of happy memories for our kids...my wife and I sure hope that's the way it works. Otherwise, we'll end up on an FBI "Most Wanted" list some time in the future as well.