A Youngster's Memory

Sometimes I am surprised by my own forgetfulness. It took me more than three weeks to remember something that should have jumped out at me from the very first. You see, last year in my writing class, I did my own set of retellings. We had two different assignments in which we were to replicate a story. The first was what caused me to remember—the collection of Little Red Riding Hood stories was quite similar to the retellings of Aesop's Fables that we had to write—however, the second project was, at least in my opinion, more interesting. The assignment was simple enough. We were to write a short story in the pattern of a tale known as “the Griffin.” Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the author, but the basis of the story is that there is a young boy who has to undergo a series of heroic events in order to win the king's favor and capture the love of the princess. If you don't already have enough to do, you can read the short story here.

Anyways, I was planning to write about my earliest memory. I have several from around the same time period, so I'm not exactly sure which one is the earliest. However, I shall choose to share perhaps the most humorous of the lot. It seems that I was a rather grown-up preschooler, because one of my memories involves a Christmas play in which, along with a group of other three- and four-year-olds, my job was to “wake” Santa from an enchanted sleep and thus save Christmas. I couldn't have been more than three and a half at the time, yet I remember thinking that the whole thing was rather ridiculous. The man wasn't asleep, he was only pretending; besides, that couldn't be Santa because the jolly old saint was busy at the North Pole making my presents. Every time I remember that, I chuckle a little at my precociousness. I don't think it's any wonder that my parents put me in preschool so I would learn how to play. By the time I was two I could say the word “ptarmigan.” Sometimes I laugh at just how ridiculous I was. More comments to come later.