ANOTHER BRAIN MANGLING MEME

1. Describe your earliest memory where the memory is clear and where clear means you can pick at least three details.

2. Give an estimate of your age at the time.


3. Tag at least three other bloggers. No names, just grab your chance to relive your own horror.


I say that because I think every memory I could dredge up was a childhood nightmare.
I really had to think hard to find the earliest one which was when we lived in Ferntree Gully so I must have been three and a half. The national park up there had huge cages for birds, really great for a national park to stick the poor buggers behind wire. I remember black cockatoos and sulphur crested cockatoos. There was a kiosk where they sold icecreams, of course I'd remember that. The children's playground was near the cages and that's where my cousin put me in a swing and swung me before I was ready. I went flying off the back of the swing at the highest point and don't remember much about anything after that.


I don't know why I went to a shrink for two years, all I had to do was discover memes. Amazing how many memories are sparked by an object, a photo or smell. I was an extremely anxious child, the shrink said it usually starts in the womb when a child has it as badly as I did. I think I tried to live in an alternate universe for years where I was a fairy queen and nothing could harm me. My mother said I was a very quiet child, of course I was. I was too frightened to breathe let alone talk to anyone.


I'm still writing down whatever comes into my mind from my childhood and it wasn't, by any means, a traumatic time. I had food, I was warmly clothed and wasn't knocked about by abusive parents, I just seem to remember all the frightening events and not many happy ones.

I might have been a fairy queen exchanged for a human child. I had an infection which caused an obstruction in the throat (I was only a baby) so the doctor sent me to Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital for two weeks. Two weeks in which my mother was not allowed to visit until she received a call to pick me up. Not one doctor explained to her what it was that I had or gave her any documentation as to what treatment I'd been given. No wonder I loved the X-Files, I was one. When I asked her why she didn't query this, she said that during the war you got used to being told what to do and to ask no questions. This was years after the war had finished.