So, I have a lot of bad memories and I’m working on finding the good ones. I’ve decided it was time to write some of them down. People I know will probably learn things they don’t want to and I’ll alienate them, and strangers will just learn to back away… slowly. Anyway, here it goes.

My earliest memory was when I was about 2 years old. I base this on the fact that I was fairly new to walking and my ‘dad’ was still around – we’ll say 3 at the oldest. I’ve been told that is a really young age for clear memories but I remember it well.

It was a summer day in the year 1982/83 in Northeast Washington state. We lived in a mobile home in Deer Park and had a giant beast of a car parked in the driveway – root-beer brown if I remember right. My older brother, who would have been about 10 at the time, was vaguely paying attention to me while the adults packed the car for a day at the lake. I was standing in the front yard barefoot, watching a bumble bee visiting alfalfa flowers. I don’t know what gave me the bright idea but I decided I wanted to capture/stop said bee but didn’t quite know how. I remembered my brother telling me “bumble bees, the fat furry ones, don’t sting”. I proceeded to step on the poor thing to prove his point I suppose, I don’t remember pain but I must have yelled and been crying because my mother noticed and told my ‘dad’ to take me inside and get the stinger out. I remember when he picked me up all I could do was stare at him like he’d never done so before. He took me into the bathroom and sat me on the counter and I looked at him in silence, no crying, just the awe of a 2 year old with an almost stranger, who never paid them any mind. I don’t remember why that stuck with me. I don’t remember the rest of the day or anything else for at least another 2 years. It’s not an all that interesting memory, but there it is.