My First Words

I don't have any pre-oral memories. My earliest memory is of me and my parents sitting around a lake with a pebble shore and broken cinder blocks. I'm wearing my pink windbreaker and we're eating green grapes from a big bag. The reason I'm fairly certain this is a "genuine" memory is because my parents identify this as the trip to Mystic Lake in Wisconsin, and although I have pictures of the pink windbreaker which may influence that, I'm certain they were green grapes. Positive about it in fact. This is important because my mom doesn't like green grapes. So while we certainly might have grapes on a trip, they would most likely have been red grapes, and if the story had been told to me the detail would probably have been skipped or they would have been red grapes. This was before my sister was born, so I'm probably about two and a half.

All the same, the memories include me being able to communicate more or less satisfactorily with my parents. According to my parents, my first word was book. I don't remember this, but I don't know why'd they make that up. I don't have any pre-oral memories although I do have a number of pre-literate memories since I didn't really read on my own until I was five or six. One of my other earliest memories is hearing my mom reading my Cinderella book to herself after I went to bed. The next day, Mom gave me a casette of her reading the book complete with "Now it's time to turn the page" notices. I don't really remember, but I must have run her ragged asking her to read me this book. That or she wanted to be able to make dinner without me bugging her to read to me. I have very few memories before my sister was born, but a wealth of memories before I could read.