My earliest memory.

I was lying in bed just gently drifting and I tried to recall my earliest memory. I then realised that it was one of my most vivid and most distant memories.
Only recently have I realised it was my first memory.

It goes something like this.

I must have been about three or four years old.
It was a pleasantly warm summers day. An ice cream van stopped outside our house on the opposite side of the road.
I crossed over and bought my ice cream. I looked and saw a car pass the ice cream van very slowly on the other side so I assumed it was safe to cross. I started to cross and I saw the car looming up on me. I was very small – it was very big.
The car hit me relatively gently and kind of threw me onto my back. My head hit the road very hard and I must have been unconscious for a short time. The next thing I remember is I am still lying on the road and I can feel the rough stones of the tarmac on the back of my head, sort of impaled into my skin. I could feel pain on the back of my head, the strongest pain I had ever felt in my life ! I just wanted to lie there until the pain subsided. The woman that had been driving the car picked me up and carried me into the house. I can remember her saying to me “come on cry, please cry” and I was thinking I don’t want to cry because this is so painful, it was taking all my energy to bear the pain never mind doing something else as well.
She carried me into the house and I remember my mum panicking.

The woman driving the car was the local district nurse, she has seen me at the ice cream van and had slowed down to be cautious. The irony is, I had assumed that the car was travelling at normal speed and had passed, therefore it was safe to cross. Because she was driving so slow I crossed in front of the car. Remember I was only three or four years old.

My mum would never let me cross the road on my own for many years after that.

Have a nice weekend