Good Luck / episode five

First Memory

My first memory which I can place in time is my fourth birthday party. My dad took me for a drive in his midnight blue Ford Mustang so my mom and her sisters could decorate the house for my surprise party. He took me to Roy Rogers and I got a chicken sandwich and a black cherry fountain soda. The soda slipped through my fingers and spilled all over my white OshKosh B’gosh corduroy pants, making a red lake on the seat and then the carpet at my feet. I don’t remember getting yelled at for that. It was my birthday. He loved me.

Later, at the house, in my pink pants, everybody jumped out and yelled, “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” One of the gifts I got was a plastic sword from Thundercats. The sword, when held up high, said, “Thunder Thunder Thundercats Ho!” Just a few days after I got that sword, my babysitter’s little brother heaved it onto their roof and the sword was gone. I never ratted him out about it. But I guess I am now.

I text my brother wanting to know if he can remember his own fourth birthday and he texts back that he can’t.

I ask a lot of people if they can remember their fourth birthday party.

I ask a lot of people what their first memory is.

The best answer I get is from my coworker Justin, who can remember something from when he was two years old. I ask him how he could remember back that far and be certain it was placed in time accurately. He says he knew he was two because he was in Arizona. He lived in Arizona until he was two, and then he moved away from the desert and that’s when his bright hot desert memories end. The first desert memory is of some friends of his mother who had gone up into the mountains that day, and while they were up at the top, they put snow in a cooler and brought it back down, specifically to show Justin, the baby, who had never seen snow before. And this memory of snow impressed Justin enough that he’s never forgotten it. They let him touch some of the snow. They put the rest of the snowball on the table and walked away. Justin was alone and couldn’t reach the snowball on the table, he was too little. The house cat jumped up on the table and pissed on the snowball, ruining it.

His earliest memory also involves being mad at the cat for ruining the snow.

When I tell Rae Justin’s story, she says, “That sounds like bullshit.”

“What does?” I say. I don’t think someone would make up a story about a cat pissing on a snowball. “What purpose would it serve to lie about that?”

“Then maybe he’s remembering it wrong.”

“Maybe,” I say. “People remember and forget things for all kinds of reasons.”

“Cats are jealous little jerks,” she says. “It could be true.”

Rae’s first memory is of being four years old and her sister being just a little bitty toddler. Rae got a suitcase, popped it open and put her sister in the suitcase because she wanted to travel everywhere with her sister, she loved her sister so much. She zipped up the suitcase. Her sister didn’t make a sound.