My First Official Memory...

...was one of staring up into a very bright light. I didn't understand what it might have been until many years later after being told about my little mishap.

Energine fabric cleaner is some really strong stuff. And it's probably great at cleaning fabrics but it's not really meant to be ingested. However, we just aren't programmed to KNOW that when we're... two.

(Or even sixteen sometimes!... as if I hadn't learned my lesson well enough when I went and took another whiff of it just out of curiosity.. and well, let's just say folks... "Please do not keep this stuff around your house, ok?" There's a product on the market called "Easy Wash" that I swear works just as well.)

Given that, it was my first cognizent memory anyway.

However...

There have been times in my life when this feeling has come over me that I couldn't quite explain. Couldn't quite put my finger on why it felt so... familiar, yet it did. And it always made me imagine of what a Q-tip must feel like... that is if a Q-tip can actually feel anything... but the gist of it is that it just felt as if I were being encased by something very soft and squooshy-like or maybe even like being constricted in a wetsuit. And when that feeling would come over me, I swear... I would literally be able to sit there for five minutes without even needing to breath. I timed it once.

Of course the feeling has happened less and less as I've gotten older and now that I'm REALLY OLD it hardly ever happens at all. But I can still remember what it felt like. The womb revisited maybe? The birth canal perhaps? I'm really not sure but the experience has always given me pause to think.

(Call me crazy if you will, but I certainly can't be alone in this. Can I?)

This is me, at around six months... or so. "Bright eyed and bushy tailed" as the saying goes.



I have no official memory of this moment...