Memorial Day…brings back memories, huh? I think of…Booger.
LOL
When you turn around, and walk your mind down Memory Lane, (“C’mon, let’s go for a walk! Good mind!” LOL) travelling backward towards the beginning of this life, the mile marker numbers get smaller, and the edges of the pictures get fuzzier, until there is only the golden haze of dawn. Take one step forward (yes, it’s OK, Simon says take one step forward) to that earliest memory.
What is it?
For me, I am three years old. We live up the street from Grandma, in a little town in the Mazoorah Ozarks. There is an aunt and uncle next door, with a passel of kids that I would come to think of as, “the mean cousins” LOL
But they (thank gawd) are not my earliest memory. It is the little girl across the street.
Somehow, at the ripe old age of 3, I already had, “Don’t cross the street” instilled in me. The street was a bad, bad thing. LOL
It was cold outside, and I was wearing a jacket. I was in the front yard, and I had gone to the edge of Allowed Land. A ditch separated me from the wicked, wicked road. I stared across the great gravel divide and spotted a giant pink marshmallow. No, it’s not a marshmallow, it is a little girl wearing a very big, very pink, puffy coat.
She looked at me and I looked at her, with the wonderment that three-year-olds have, and I called out, “Hi!”
She ran to her front door.
Fortunately this did not permanently traumatize my gregarious nature. LOL
She paused, then curiously, cautiously, edged her way back towards the ditch at the front of her yard, frequently studying her shoes along the way. We looked at one another again, and she raised her hand in a shy wave.
I called out again. “What’s your name?”
She put her thumb in her mouth, blinked a few times, pulled her thumb out and replied, “Booger”.
I remember thinking, “That’s a funny name,” just before a woman in a floral housedress leaned out the front door, and did indeed yell, “Booger!”
The pink marshmallow fled indoors.
Later, we became friends, and played in the autumn leaf piles, before our fathers raked them to the edge of the road and set them ablaze. And when the snow fell, we played on sleds together.
I’m sure (or I hope I’m sure LOL) that her birth certificate didn’t read “Booger” but I can’t recall what her given name was.
But Booger lives at the edge of my mind, at the farthest-back place I can remember.
What dwells on your edge?
Categories: Special Days, Humor
Posted by Marti @ 
That is a really sweet story. I guess the edge of my mind is populated with dozens of frogs and toads and salamanders that I just had to bring home….probably my mother’s mind has a slightly different take on that then mine. Have a good weekend.
May 29th, 2006 at 5:39 am
i certainly hope she outgrew that childhood name! lol!
as for what dwells on my edge, i think the earliest memory i can recall is of my parents taking me for an evening stroll along the seaside. i looked forward to each evening because i got to eat my favorite treat afterwards.
May 29th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Hm…had to think really hard for this one! I guess it’s an argue between me and my mother what clothes to wear one day. There was my favorite one that was getting too small for me and she wanted to put on something more fitting. She did. And I didn’t go out, refusing to, when not allwed to wear my fav. Finally in the end of the day I managed to change by myself and went out - only to discover that it wasn’t comfy any more, it really was too small…. Stubborn I was…*lol*
May 29th, 2006 at 9:17 am
Nosebleed, that I got hunting for boogers.
May 29th, 2006 at 10:20 am
I was 3, living in Cali. My mom was pregnant with my little sister and laying on the couch. My sister started to kick so my mom asked me if I wanted to feel it. I place my hand on her stomach and at the exact moment my sister kicked and earthquake struck. scared the life out of me and I would not touch my moms stomach again untill after the birth.
May 29th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Also, at three, I remember a very grainy television set with Neil Armstrong saying, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
May 29th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
When I was 3 years old, I had a playmate named Clydene. I later thought that was an odd name, but its nothing like a little girl named Booger!
May 30th, 2006 at 1:01 am
Was her brother’s name Phlegm?
May 30th, 2006 at 8:10 am
Did you change your door?
My earliest memory is of standing next to my mom while she stood on a chair getting special dishes out of the cupboard over the frig, handing them to me and I was holding on to them tight. I was 3 and we where moving to a new house - this must be why this memory stuck in my mind. What the heck she was doing having a 3 year old hold her special dishes is beyond me but whatev.
My 19 yo daughter has a freaky memory (dreams too!) and she can remember stuff from when she was still in her crib!
May 30th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
I have plenty of memories of when I was five. But very few earlier ones. I remember planting a kiss on my father’s cheek while he was at my grandparents’ pool. There’s actually a picture of my doing that. Then I remember my father’s red 1971 Barracuda. It doesn’t surprise me that I grew up to marry a motorhead.
May 30th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Thank you all for your comments - I loved reading your memories!
Damned thunderstorms here have kept me off of the computer!
I miss y’all!
May 31st, 2006 at 5:11 pm