Return of Memoryfest - Day 31/31

[bironic]

Last day. *sniff* Suddenly I am assaulted with ideas for memories, and room for only one of them. Let’s go back to the beginning. Or one of many beginnings.

31. Pre-school, Kindergarten, possibly Elementary School

The first book I remember reading had a duck for a main character. It was a picture book about making friends, I think. At the end, the duck and its friends gathered around a pond with lily pads and cat-tails, and there were plates with stacks of pancakes topped with butter and maple syrup.

There’s also a brief memory of one of those squishy waterproof books that you can take into the bathtub, but to tell the story would embarrass my sister, so we’ll leave it at that.

Later, I remember sitting on the couch in the living room next to my dad, as we often did while I was learning to read bigger books with more complicated vocabulary. I paused or stumbled over a long word, and he taught me how to break it down into easily pronounceable syllables. Take it one syllable at a time, he said, rather than trying to tackle the whole thing at once. For years and years afterwards, when someone reading out loud in class would fumble or freak out at a big word in a passage, I’d scoff (in my head) that they didn’t know this trick. (When what I really should have done was be grateful for having a father so patient and loving and excellent at teaching.)



And this is me at the tender age of two, doing what I do best. My dad snapped the photo on his Nikon slide camera as I slept in the car seat in Yellowstone Park.

And... there we have it. One month; 31 top-level memories and many, many more in comments. Stay tuned--the post-mortem is coming up this weekend.

Comments

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

Sadly words are more my thing than photos, so you're stuck with the emu :D

My favourite game when I was about 3 was a word one. Mum had small cards with simple words on them that she'd spread out all over the (rather small) living room floor. Then she'd read a word out and I'd have to jump on it. At that age, this about as exciting as it gets, which is probably why I still get such a kick out of reading.

Actually, she maintains it was purely selfish, teaching me to read as soon as possible - as a single parent, she needed something (preferably cheap) to keep me occupied while she got on with her work, and reading was ideal!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

At that age, this about as exciting as it gets

Heh. That does sound like a lot of fun. And selfish motives or not, if it got you reading, and so early, your mum's to be congratulated.

(Is it weird and/or pretentious for an American referring to an Englishperson's mother to say "mum" rather than "mom"?)

P.S. There are far worse things to be stuck with than an emu. The photo made me laugh.

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

(Is it weird and/or pretentious for an American referring to an Englishperson's mother to say "mum" rather than "mom"?)

Nope! I don't think of her as my 'mom', so that would have been weird ;) The emu makes me smile as well, and, boy, do I need that today...

[bironic.livejournal.com]

It would seem, then, that we both do. Hope things, whatever they are, start looking up for you.

OK on the "mom"/"mum," then. Hard to tell whether it's better to risk sounding pretentious or to mildly offend the other person by enforcing an Americanism on him/her. :)

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

I have a small stuffed dog keeping me company, and that's working wonders. Um, there's an explanation at my LJ *blushes*

On the spelling, I tend to think it's sensitive rather than pretentious, as it proves you know the difference! I had a (relatively) huge crisis over the spelling in my latest story, as it's Americans in America, but as the primary show is British and I'm British, I decided that we had the casting votes. *grin* But when I write House or Criminal Minds, I use American spelling, because, well, it just seems appropriate. Sorry to ramble - language fascinates me :D

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ramble on! You're in sympathetic company. I went through a similar "crisis" when I wrote a Harry Potter story over the summer. The characters were English, in England, but I'm an American writing in America; I ended up keeping American spelling and punctuation but making sure the characters spoke only with British phrasing. But HP fandom has been hopelessly polluted with American writers, anyway, so it wasn't out of the ordinary at all for the story to have double-quotes ("") and "z"s for "s"s and so forth.

(See? I ramble too. :))

Hope you're feeling better. That was funny about people not thinking the teddy bear was strange. You were the one with the story about losing an Eeyore cell phone case, right? and people thought it was cute rather than silly?

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

*blushes* yup, the phone case story was me. I'm actually not nearly as soppy as those two stories make out, but somehow that doesn't seem to come across. :D I think it's more that I'm just willing to admit to these things! It's either a certain simpleness of approach or shameless exhibitionism. I'll get back to you...