Unforgettable Childhood Memories

Just like some memories are caused by forgetfulness, other memories might never be forgotten.

Today, my 3 year old entertained himself while I read aloud to the other kids. How nice, I thought, that the boy was keeping himself busy without watching TV. Yet my confident feeling quickly disappeared when I heard screams from the kitchen. For the past 10 minutes, the boy had been washing the nail polish off of the palms of his hands. Even though I heard the water, I figured what harm could come of the water running for so long. In order to keep scrubbing his hands, he used up all of the hand soap.  When that ran out, then used all the lotion in a nearby tube. I can't figure out why he dropped the glass that ended up breaking into a dozen pieces in the sink mess because he can't articulate his random actions. As I put on my rubber gloves to clean up the mess, I assigned the 11 year old to change the baby's diaper.

According to the reports that came in, this diaper was legendary. Not only was a change of clothes required, but somehow the carpet bore the marks of the overflowing toxic waste. The two oldest and I cleaned and scrubbed the carpet until now those marks are whiter than our off-white carpet. I guess after that explosively stinky mess that he created, I shouldn't cringe at the many pumps of my Christmas gifted perfume he doused on himself.

There's a good chance that today might be forgotten in the myriad of other similar days. One only needs to only walk around our house to see his handiwork on the walls, the carpet, books, cabinets, and destroyed treasured possessions.

Occasionally, though, our family's mask is lifted long enough in public for people to experience firsthand our mayhem. For example, when we drove up to Seven Springs for our ski vacation last week, my 7 year old managed to lock herself in the restaurant bathroom. Sure, we all lock the door when we enter. But what do you do when the knob won't unlock when you want to exit? The military trained minds in our group discussed the merits of disassembling the screws on the door in order to pull it off entirely. The owner of the restaurant provided a less dramatic rescue. With a screwdriver, he removed the knob and freed the frightened and exhausted little girl.

As these unpleasant memories happen, you feel like you never want to think about them again. After you get over the worst of the experience, you are already ready to laugh about it and are already looking back on that experience with a "can you believe that just happened?" These unpleasant circumstances become the unforgettably good memories.