My Memories

I grew up in an average American household. I was born and raised in the same house in Saint Paul and can’t imagine growing up anywhere else. I have an older sister who is very free-spirited and my parents are divorced. The problem with my history is that I can’t remember a lot of it. I started realizing this last year during a 9/11 memorial. Everyone was remembering where they were on 9/11, and I realized I had no idea. I started thinking about other events, such as my parents telling me and my sister about their divorce, and realized I couldn’t remember that either.

I started getting really weirded out. Is there something I was repressing, like in all the television shows? Was there something wrong with my brain? After talking it over with my parents, I think I was just a distracted kid. I always seemed to be “out of it” and in my own world. Even events that directly affected me like my parents' divorce didn’t seem to make much of an impact in my mind. So is this a good thing or bad thing? I’m still trying to decide. It could be a good thing because negative events didn’t “scar” me or anything, and I was a really happy kid. I was always entertained and independent, and found it easy to move on from mistakes in life. However, it is also extremely frustrating. I would like to know about more of these major events that I lived through, and have an accurate point of view of those events. Lately, I have been talking to friends and family, and learning more about my unknown history. I have also been able to gain information from pictures and diaries, but I feel like that information can be seriously biased. So can young memories, however.

So what do I remember? I remember watching a lot of television. For years I lived through television sitcoms and cartoons. They comforted me, taught me, and connected me to the world. I remember riding my bike up the block with my sister, and eating ice cream bars once we got there. I remember learning and singing Spanish songs at my Spanish Immersion elementary school. I remember the excruciating (and possibly enhanced) details of when I broke my finger at age 6 while roller skating. I remember dancing at my mother and stepfather’s wedding, and then later playing hide and seek upstairs from the party. These things are crystal clear in my memory, because they were things my young, distracted mind could comprehend.

While I still find it bizarre that I can’t remember major events of my childhood, I find it comforting to think about the memories I do still have. I was a very happy child, and that has shaped me to become a very happy young adult. Now I am focusing on creating new memories, and making sure these ones are not forgotten.