Ronnie's First Memory

Audio.

Lights.

Consciousness.

The woman was standing behind a counter of sorts, talking to someone on the phone. She looked at me and said "Hold on just a moment."

"Are you okay?"

I drew a blank. Had I been on the planet more than 30 seconds, it might have occurred to me to respond, "No," but at that moment the concept "compared to what" was beyond my grasp.

I had no idea there could be alternate realities – one in which I was okay and one in which I was not.

There was only this one, entirely fresh, reality. Agenda item one was on the table. Reality 102 would have to wait.

I instinctively sensed she wanted to hear "Yes."

"Uh . . . uh huh."

"Are you sure?"

"Mmm hmm" I said, looking forward across the tile floor and then left up the stairs. "Yah."

She didn't look convinced, but I did say I was okay, so she took her hand off the receiver and resumed her conversation, whatever it was. It sounded complicated. I understood most of the words, but "resebation(?)", "kishinet(?)", "check ow time(?)".

"What's she talking about?"

She stopped again. "I need to talk to my child. Just a moment. I'm sorry."

"Ronnie, don't just sit there. Go play outside. Run around. It's a beautiful day. Lewis? Lewis? Oh, where's that brother of yours? Go find Lewis. You're making me nervous sitting around inside for no good reason."

There was more than enough excitement right where I was.

"I like it here. Can I stay here?"

I got a non-response, but I instinctively knew that anything but a "no" constituted consent.

She finished her call and was writing on the counter top when a man came walking quickly in the door. She did not greet him, and he continued on past us into a large dark dance hall, or meeting hall of some sort.

"Sam, have you seen Lewis?"

He stopped, clearly anxious to be on with what he was doing. He was a man with a plan.

"No. Why?"

"Ronnie's just sitting around. He needs to go do something. It's a sunny day and here he sits at the bottom of the stairs. Go play! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Honey, are you sure you're okay?"

She came over, and held her hand over my forehead. I felt a familiar safety and calm.

"You don't have a fever, but you're not yourself either. What's wrong?"

She was close to figuring out that I wasn't okay.

"Sam, I think there's something wrong with him."

Wrong . . . wrong . . . I didn't like the sound of that. My little-kid brain came hard-wired with a certain primitive math.

[(wrong=not good) and (not good=bad)] and thus [wrong=bad]

I didn't want to be bad, so I sucked it up. They wanted me to be good. I wanted to be good. All available evidence indicated good little Ronnies play outdoors on sunny days.

"Can I go outside now?"

I wasn't out of the woods. They were going to find out – find out what I wasn't sure, but something was bad and I wasn't going to let on I had any part in it.

My father - it turns out this was my dad - looked at me and smiled.

"You don't need permission to go outside."

I thought to myself it would be a lot less complicated if he'd deny me permission to go outside. Even if his denial of permission were arbitrary and made no sense, at least it wouldn't be me saying I'm scared to go outside right now.

As it was, the best way to divert attention from my situation was to do what any normal healthy four-year-old ought to want to do on a beautiful summer day.

I stepped out into the world.

My parents didn't lie. It was a gorgeous day – 75 degrees – the air fresh with pine. Small clouds passed over and off the sun in succession, their shadows racing down the side of the mountain and across the rocky valley bottom towards me. There were people – people everywhere - sitting, walking, driving cars.

I was really glad I'd figured out which of them were my parents! Otherwise my cover would have been blown in short order.

A long building stretched out far in both directions, and in the front were these flowers of great beauty. I stared at them. This was a clue. I could feel it.

"I'll show you how to water the flowers. Would you like that?"

He had returned from the back of the great hall with a strange metal thing and a hammer.

"I just have to fix this one leak. Come on. Soon you'll be big enough to drag the hoses. You need to know how to do this.

Well? Come on. Nothing gets done if you don't get after it."

We walked past some parked cars and around a corner. The building was bigger than big, and all along the front were more of those beautiful flowers. Every now and then we passed big round purple trees that smelled wonderful.

Someone mean tripped me, and I started to cry. My dad picked me up and said to be more careful. No, no one was trying to hurt me. He would never let that happen. He gave me a big hug and tickled me. This was fun. It was just a hose.

How many times had he told me to be careful around the hoses?

"Once," I thought to myself, still unconvinced that I wasn't being followed by some evil trickster, whose purpose in life was to make me fall and get hurt.

"Durn leaks," he said, looking down at a squirt of water that came out the side of the hose.  For me, it was a gush that sprayed high into the sky. He walked away and I started to follow, but my knee hurt, and my legs got tired.  I was afraid he might leave and the trickster would get me. He stuck his head into a big hole far away. The leak stopped. He came back, pulled out a pocket knife and cut the hose in half where the leak had been. He then jammed each end of the hose onto the odd metal thing, laid it back down and started beating it with the hammer. I was confused by this, but I somehow knew I wouldn't understand the answer so I didn't ask.

For a long time we marched great distances, with him explaining that hoses are better than buckets, and why kinks in the hose cause them to leak, and how if I like the Nasturtiums, I should like to drag hoses also. He kept talking about other things I needed to know. Industry. Valves. Enterprise. Seeds. Self-criticism. Motel guests. Adam Smith.

"Can I sit down? I'm tieerrrrd."

"What are mas-chur-shuns?"

"What? You love nasturtiums. You see them every day, kid. Here, let's have a taste."

We sat on the edge of one of the planters. He reached down behind one of the flowers, pinched off part of it and ate it.

"You eat frowers?"

He stopped and looked at me for a long time.

"Is this some new game you kids are playing? We all eat the nectar off the back of the flowers, especially you. 'Do I eat flowers' (he mocked with a gentle smile) . . . Go on, have one. I don't understand you today."

I reached down and grabbed the pointy part of the flower and pulled. It resisted and I gave it a yank, pulling the whole flower off the plant.

"Durn! I told you not to do it that way! Here, I'll show you again. You grab it like this, okay? Pinch right here. No, don't squash it! Use your fingernails to cut it off. Good job. Yeah like that.

Well? Go on. Eat it."

It was my favorite taste in the whole wide world. I didn't know what nectar was, and I didn't know what "peppery" meant, but this taste was familiar. This taste was happy, and I'd just tasted it for the very first time. I looked at zillions and zillions of these orange, red, yellow, yummy things and I was overwhelmed with ground-shaking, undistracted bliss.

"Some more?"

"I don't like this game. You know you can have as much as you want.  What's it supposed to prove? It lacks purpose."

He spied my sainted older brother. Bless him, I was a major pain, and it was only going to get worse.

"Lewis, have you kids been playing some impractical new game, where you pretend not to know things you know perfectly well?"

"Well?"

Lewis professed to know nothing about it, and of course he didn't. Dad looked back at me. "Well, then you stop it."

Tears welled up in my eyes. "Stop what?" I thought.

It became apparent to me I was a bad boy. It was one of those facts of life, like the sun and the clouds and the hose and the trickster. I was determined to change that though. I wouldn't fall. I'd keep questions to a minimum, least the answer be something I "already know" or "ought to know by now." I'd use proper technique when pinching the nectar buds off maschurshuns.

And I had to go to the bathroom.

"Dad, I gotta go."

"Number one or number two."

"Two."

"Well, go on then."

"Go?" I was getting a bit agitated. "Go where? Why?"

"Go on upstairs."

I knew where the stairs were. I hurried as best I could down the front of the long building, into the great hall and up to the top of the stairs. I stopped and looked around. What was upstairs? The poop fairy? The few tears erupted into full blown distress. My mother came up the stairs and asked what was wrong now. It was clear she cared for me very much and wanted to fix whatever it was.

"I have to go."

"So?  Go."

--------------

Ronnie had forgotten everything he knew about potty training.

Welcome Ronnie. Your life stretches out before you farther than you can imagine. Let the games begin.

[more?]