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When I was two or three years old I was in the back of my Daddy's Chevy Apache truck, and he was loading square hay bales in to the bed, I was attacked by bumblebees, they stung me a dozen times or more. I remember crushing one or two between my little fingers, and I remember how the stings hurt me and took my breath away. My Daddy fought the bees off as best could and took me to my Grand Ma's house and she applied a paste of baking soda to my face and neck where the stings were, and my Daddy called the Doctor who said to take me to the Hospital, which he did. There they gave me a shot and kept me for awhile. Then I went home and my Mommy put ice packs on me. I lived, much to the chagrin of some.

One of my early memories.

My earliest memory: I had probably just turned three (or was about to). I was sitting at the table, eating cooked carrots, and I didn't like them.

There are a number of memories immediately following that, such as playing army men with the little German boy who lived the floor above us; our neighbor, Herr Kuhn, bringing us chocolate (and my sister, brother and I speaking German for him); Fausching; sledding with my brother, and watching the older kids ski down the hill behind our apartment; my dad making a Ferris Wheel out of Tinker Toys at Christmas; seeing my siblings running excitedly to the kitchen, and running right behind them, only to find out that they were getting the wishbone, not something delicious to eat; getting on the plane to come to the U.S., and throwing up on the trip. Once we came to the U.S. (I was 3 1/2), I have a flood of memories, but I got a concussion when I was about 2 1/2, and all my memories are sometime after that. All of those memories are pretty vivid, and I used to have memories of our landlord/landlady, Pop and Elsa, and although I still have a vague memory, it has faded. All I remember now is that he was bald, and she was curly-headed, and they were very kind to us. In fact, I had conflated Herr Kuhn and Pop at one point, and when my mom corrected me, suddenly some of the memories came back more clearly (about Herr Kuhn). I also remember opening the door to the outside, and snow falling in (it was head-high to me).

I have always described those early memories as episodes where I briefly became "conscious". I would periodically become aware that I was aware, and those times are what I remember. By the time I was four, my "awareness" was always on (except for those two blackout experiences in college, but that's a whole 'nother story).

When I was @3 my folks bought a new place in Sunray. There were tall weeds in the backyard and dad hired a couple of teenagers to clear them out with yoyos and I remember walking thru the weeds. They were over my head.
There was also a big Chinese elm out back and I spent a lot of time up in that tree playing Tarzan.

In the summer of 1947 my mother came home from the hospital in an ambulance with my newborn baby brother. Nothing wrong with either one, that ride home was just an option back then. I was 2 1/2.

My younger sister is 2 years, 2 months younger than I am.
I can remember when she first came into our lives.

I remember as a very little kid , I remember Mom telling me not to stick anything into the electrical outlets . I remember getting a butterknife and shoving it into the electric outlet . I got zapped , kept it to myself and learned something . Musta been around 1952 - 53 .

ralph wrote:I remember as a very little kid , I remember Mom telling me not to stick anything into the electrical outlets . I remember getting a butterknife and shoving it into the electric outlet . I got zapped , kept it to myself and learned something . Musta been around 1952 - 53 .

My youngest brother did the same thing with a bobby pin. Singed his eyebrows and the hair on the front of his head and blew him half way across the room. No secret there.

I remember a trip to West Virginia to see my Mom's parents especially the smell of Lysol that my Mom used to clean the motel room toilets. Guess they weren't clean enough to suit her. I would have been 2 years old.