Return of Memoryfest - Day 31/31
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.
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.