I wrote this for an english class. The assignment was to record a memory, and then analyze it. As essay assignments go, this was pretty interesting.
I was about ten years old when we made the trip. At the time we lived in Floyd, which was, and still is, a very rural county. Besides groceries and farming equipment, there was not much to buy in Floyd, so every week or so we would make a trip to one of the nearby towns, either Blacksburg or Roanoke. Since Blacksburg was closer, and we didn’t have any unusual things to purchase, my father chose to go to Blacksburg that day.
I, of course, didn’t have anything to buy. I had to go because my mother had a full time job, so there was nobody to watch over me at home while my father went out and bought things. So I went with him to Blacksburg, not particularly happy about it, but not that distressed about it, either. After all, I had to go with him whenever he left the house and my mother was not home to watch me. Since I was home schooled, I was usually home, which meant that I often had to go with him when he bought things in town, or when he went to visit his friends.
Even though the trip was unremarkable, that fact did not keep me from feeling a little resentful. After all, before my mother got a job, she stayed home most of the time and I didn’t have to go on boring trips at all.
I don’t remember all the places we went on that day, but I do remember one store distinctly. It was the K-Mart which, at the time, was located on Main Street. This was before the Walmart, or even the New River Valley Mall had been built, so K-Mart was the only real general store in Blacksburg. Even without all the competition that it was to face in the near future, the store had already become somewhat rundown.
They did not have much that was very interesting to a young boy, but there was one thing of interest, something I could go look at while my father bought things in the store. A year or so previously, my parents had bought me a video game machine. While I was not bad at video games, I was not as good as some of my friends at playing the games I owned. At the K-Mart they sold a “Game Strategy Guide”, which wasn’t a strategy guide at all. It was much more of a set of instructions on exactly how to play the game featured, so as to be able to beat the game without needing a lot of skill. It was very long (or so it seemed to my young brain), and was way too long to memorize. When we visited the store, I would read a little of the guide, and when I got home, use what I remembered to get a little further. Then the next time we were in the K-Mart I would read a little more and repeat the cycle.
So when we got to the K-Mart I went to the video game section and read for a little while. Before long I had reached my limit and got tired of reading the book. I stopped reading, but hung around and looked at the other items on display. Some time later, a boy much older than myself entered the aisle and went to look at the book. I suppose he was a college student, although at the time I didn’t really have any concept of college, or the students that would be enrolled there. I guess he was slightly self-conscious, with me being there, for he muttered under his breath, as he looked at the guide, “Geez, I’m 21, you’d think I wouldn’t need this to beat a video game”. The comment wasn’t really aimed at me, or anybody else, he just stated it, sort of as though it was amazing to think that at 21 he would need help with anything. He hastily flipped through the guide and then left, without really reading anything.
I clearly remember thinking that the student was quite wrong to think that his age should have any effect on his skill at a video game, or any thing else, really. Sure, how good you are at something is related to how much experience you have. But it is the experience in that area that is important, not just the total amount of experience you have from life. There are other important issues too, like how smart you are, and how good you are at other basic skills. It seemed perfectly plausible that a 21 year old might be no better at a video game than I, or more precisely, that I could be as good, or better than somebody twice as old as me, if I wanted to devote the time.
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Looking back on this memory, the thing that is most interesting to me is the fact that I remember it at all. There is nothing at all remarkable about any one of the things that happened that day. And yet, just a few days ago, it popped into my head, not thought of for many years, but always there if I had wanted to retrieve it. Why had this little event stuck in my head, if the only events of significance were not very unique?
My mother had, after all, been working for perhaps as many as 5 years before this memory took place. While her taking a job and leaving me with my father all day was a very traumatic experience, I only have a few memories of it affecting me. And while this one may be one of the few, it is certainly not the best remembered, or the most telling. So I don’t think that is why I remember this trip.
As for the trip itself and the K-Mart, I went on many day trips to town with dad, and visited the K-Mart many times. Writing this memory down, however, has made me think about other memories from day trips, and I have been surprised to realize that I remember very few of them in detail. What I do remember from other trips does, however, indicates that there was nothing especially notable about this trip. As for K-Mart, spending time reading the video game strategy guide was what I always did there, so there is nothing memorable about that.
This memory focuses the most on the college student, and his comment on how he should be skilled at video games at 21. This was not the first time I had heard the idea that older kids should be better at things just by the virtue of their age. It is a common idea, and seems to be generally true. Certainly, it was expressed in many various forms throughout my childhood. But this simple and common memory may be the reason I remember this trip at all.
When I was writing this, I started out with a very basic memory of being in a store during one of our many shopping trips, reading a video game guide, and then hearing a much older kid complain that at his age he shouldn’t have a need for the guide at all. Yet when I wrote the memory down, I recorded much more than just that one part. In recording those details which came naturally, but were not directly related, I think I found the reason why this memory still survives.
As I said in the beginning, I had to go on this trip because my mother was not home to take care of me. I was too young to stay at home alone so I had to go with my father, and be where I could be watched. Almost 10 years later, I can accept the idea that I was too young to be left alone for extended periods of time. When I was 10, however, I know I did not. I very much resented being dragged along when I felt, however young I might be, I was mature enough to watch over myself for the day.
While perhaps not in the forefront of my mind that day, I am sure that I was feeling those thoughts when I heard the student in effect admit that age didn’t really have any effect on a skill I could easily relate to. If I could be as skilled as a person twice as old as I in one area, was it such a big jump to think that I was also mature enough to stay home alone?
While I don’t at all remember thinking such thoughts after I heard the student’s comment, I am pretty sure that this is the reason why I remember this unremarkable event. The combination of the things that happened resulted in feelings strong enough to remember long after the fact.
Writing down the memory, and then discussing it, was very helpful in figuring out its meaning. I think without the freewriting exercise at the beginning I would not have put down the thoughts that I needed for later. Those unrelated thoughts were important building blocks for determining why I could recall the event with such clarity. It was only after trying to connect the recorded thoughts together many times that their greater meaning emerged. Perhaps this meaning is not the original reason that I remembered the event, but I feel fairly strongly that it is, and whether I am correct or not, coming up with this has helped me understand my childhood in a way that previously I only vaguely grasped.
I think Hampl is right. We write in order to know ourselves. While trying to record the truth was important for completing my memory in a useful way, the truth about this one little memory was not the final goal. Much more important is the fact that through writing it down, I now better understand an issue in my childhood in a way I barely did before.
