Memories

The Lycan and I were watching Abduction last night with Taylor Lautner and it brought up something that I had never thought of before.

The premise of the movie is that the character played by Lautner is the son of a block-ops agent for the United States government and after his mother is killed, he is placed with two other CIA agents for his own protection.  He has been unaware of this until a school project finds him researching missing persons websites where he stumbles upon a picture of himself as a child.  Turns out he does not have any pictures of himself as a little one with the exception of two (I believe).

At this point in the movie, the Lycan turns to me and asks if I have any pictures of me as a child.  After thinking about it, I am not real sure.  I know my Daddy used to have a few, but I haven’t seen them in ages.  There weren’t that many that I can remember in the first place.  I have SO many of my two youngest, but I have to admit the older ones don’t have that many left.  In the intervening years the ones I had have been lost in moves or misplaced, or something.  Maybe that is the case for me as well.

All this got me to pondering my memories.

I have to say that I don’t have that many until I was in the third grade and then it is still kinda spotty.  I have a few flashes of things: the night my mother left, an apartment that I am not sure was ours, some times at one school that I think was in Mesquite, stuff like that.  That is about it.  I don’t remember birthdays, Christmases, or family get-togethers.  I do remember that I was not allowed to go to my cousin’s funeral.

I remember the day my Daddy was taken from our house by an escaped inmate and that he hit some horses on the way home totally the red Ford Gran Torino he drove.  The Aprils Fools Day I got him good by turning the color all the way down on the TV and making him think that the picture went out and we needed a new one.  I remember that the son of one of my step-mothers was nicknamed Booger.  Other than that, nothing.

This makes me feel a little sad.  Was my life so bad that I don’t want to remember?  I know that my childhood was not ideal.  I have two official step-mothers, but I do know that there were other women.  My sister was raised by my grandparents while I stayed with my Daddy. The only memory I have of her when we were younger was the night my mother left: the two of us following her around crying and begging her not to go.  Then the next one was when I was about 12 and I had to take care of her while my Daddy worked.

Is this normal? Do other people not remember things until they are close to their teen years?