As you may or may not know, I’m currently in pursuit of my degree in computer network administration. As part of that, we have to meet all the gen-ed requirements of any degree program, including English Composition. I just completed my first essay on the topic of our earliest memory. Our first assignment was as follows:

Your first paper assignment is two-fold. First, you will describe the earliest memory you have. Be as specific and detailed as possible. Describe what you remember seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, thinking, feeling. Depending on the strength (and length!) of your memory, this section of the paper might be anywhere from two paragraphs to two pages long.

Next, analyze why this particular memory may be so clear to you. Do you still experience similar reactions/emotions? Has this memory taught you something important or shaped your current lifestyle choices? Or, do you think this memory is a coincidence and says nothing about the person you have become?

Here is my submission:

It’s Natural To Abhor A Vacuum

My Earliest Memory

Most, if not all, of the memories from my early childhood center around interactions between the two siblings I lived with: my sister, Stephanie, with whom I share both parents and my half-brother, David, who is my mother’s son from her first marriage. I am the youngest and David is the oldest, and we are all separated by two years. The particular memory I have chosen may not be sequentially the first memory I have, but it is the earliest complete and concrete memory I have surrounding a specific event.

My siblings and I had a tendency to play rough. We would play games like “tackle”, which is essentially where one of us would stand next to the bed and the other would get a running head start and then throw themselves at the other, tackling them violently on the bed. This usually only went one or two rounds, until I got hurt. I was a very small child, and my brother was a rather large child. This particular memory, however, centers around a game we came up with one day, and in the end, we only played it once. One of us, and to this day it is disputed as to who, came up with the idea for “The Hitting Game”. There were two rules: 1) we each could take turns hitting each other as hard as we like, and 2) we weren’t allowed to tell on each other. I was somewhere around age 4 ½ at this time, making my sister 6 ½, and my brother 8 ½. I weighed all of 30 pounds, and by that age, my brother weighed close to 100 pounds. The odds were definitively stacked in his favor, but I was only 4 ½ and thusly I didn’t understand odds and probabilities yet.

The game started with my sister. She took her best shot at me, a rather flimsy hook to the shoulder. She dealt a similar blow to my brother. The first round complete, my brother decided he should be next. He took the opportunity to deliver a club-like blow to the back of both my sister and myself. It was heavy, it was substantial, and it hurt. A lot. Round two was over, and it was looking like we had a clear winner. However, as stated, there are only two rules. My 4 ½ year old brain decided that the absence of a rule on a matter meant that I was free to make up my own. So I took my shot at my sister, but it was half-hearted. I hit her only slightly harder than she had hit me. The deciding point in the contest was at hand; it was time for me to hit my brother as hard as I could, and he couldn’t tell on me.

I eyed our surroundings and chose my weapon quickly. The Fisher-Price Magic-Vac™ swung quickly and struck true. My brother’s eyes went wide, and his hands went to his mouth. My mother, who had taken that opportunity to walk in just in time to see the coup de grâce delivered, gasped in horror. She had just finished mopping and cleaning the linoleum floor that had been installed that week. My sister laughed. David sprinted towards the kitchen, and almost made it to the sink. It was like a slow motion action scene in a movie. The shout went up from my mother.

“DAVID! Don’t spit blood on our new-“

Too late. The mouthful of blood ruined the last hour’s work. The skittering of a front tooth could be heard. It really was nice linoleum.

“- floor. Stephanie, go find that tooth. David, get to the sink. STEPHEN MICHAEL, GET TO YOUR ROOM.”

That’s about where any agreement on what happened ends. From there, neither myself nor my siblings really remember what happened.

As to the significance of that memory, I think it speaks less to who I was or am as a person, and more to just being a childhood story we like to tell and retell at family gatherings every year. Unlike a lot of stories, it hasn’t gained much in embellishment over the years. It’s been nearly 21 years since that happened, and the story is still told the same today as it was when I was 10. I think the charm in it, and the reason it stands out so much and is still retold today, comes from the strange juxtaposition of what might be the most harmless and benign children’s toy ever – the Fisher-Price Magic-Vac™ – and the violence of it all.  Beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot of analysis I can offer, beyond the harsh lesson my brother learned that day: if you’re going to play the Hitting Game, you have to be willing to pay the Fisher-Price.