This Week's Prompt

Last night I told my fabulous class at the Alta Club that I would share the weekly prompts the North Carolinians are sending me and Ken so that we can (somewhat painlessly) write our life stories.  This way they can use the prompts, too.

See how awesome and generous I am?

Okay--this week's prompt:  "What is your earliest memory?"

This one's easy--the day they brought my brother John home from the hospital.  I was 2 1/2 and the Belle of the Baby Ball at our house.  But I was completely upstaged by this skinny red new sibling who commanded everyone's attention from the moment he walked onto the family stage.

I can remember looking at him on his little blanket with smoldering resentment  as everyone crowded around, taking pictures.  NOT OF ME.  I almost felt contempt for my dad, who was busy making goofy faces for the baby.

Okay.  Maybe not contempt.  Sympathetic embarrassment--the kind of embarrassment you feel for someone who apparently isn't feeling embarrassed for himself.  So I decided to run away.

First I ran away and hid in the basement.  No one came looking for me.

Then I ran away outside and stood underneath the crabapple tree in our front yard.   No one came looking for me.

So then I went back inside and began the process of resigning myself to my fate, much as Soviet dissidents resigned themselves to one way trips to some distant archipelago . . .

(Don't worry.  I didn't hurt him.  Very much, anyway.  And we're friends now that he's a lot bigger than I am.)