When I was young

I have a friend who has a rather bad memory. I like to think mine is pretty good. It's very quiet here this morning which I dearly love, and I have been thinking about my childhood. I tried to go back to my earliest memory. I came up with two.

First, I remember standing on the front seat of a car with my youngest brother at the wheel. Remember now, my brothers were 14 & 16 when I was born. I'm guessing I was no more than 3 here. I remember coming home from the ride all excited, running into the house and telling my mom what fun I had doing broadies in the parking lot with Danny. My mother was not happy, which in turn made my brother not happy. I remember him flinging a pillow at my feet and knocking me down. Asshole. That is him on the left, in the Reno hat. He's got his arm around me playing all nicey nicey, but I suspect he's just trying to remember where he left the pillow. As I said, they were 14 & 16 when I was born. They're old now. I can take them.

I remember kindergarten. I started school when I was 4 and this was at the beginning of the year. We were having a turtle race that day at school. That was in the days when we were allowed to have tiny turtles as pets. We didn't know they carried salmonella at that time. They were just cute, took little care, and every kid had one. We carried them in little white boxes, the kind you put Chinese take away in. It was time for the big race and I remember being afraid to touch my turtle! Perhaps deep down I already knew about the salmonella thing. Nah, I was just a scaredey cat. I opened the box and shook him out onto the floor. After the race, I didn't want to put him back in the box. I remember pretending I couldn't catch him. Kenneth Delecki came to my rescue. He had a painted turtle. He also had a gold front tooth. How cool was that? He caught my turtle, boxed it up for me, and we went to lay on our rugs for nap time. I can still picture exactly how that class room looked.

I like turtles today. In soup.