Okay, here's my very earliest memory. And it's vivid: it's after dark, but the door is open in my room and it lets in light from the hall. I'm in my crib — it was actually a youth bed - a big, beautiful carved oak heirloom thing I slept in until I was six. But I'm still a baby here, so there are wooden bars on the sides. I've pulled myself up by the rails and and I'm padding back and forth. I have pajamas with the feet in, and I remember the tappity-tap my footies make against the plastic mattress pad. That, and the sound of me screeching like a howler monkey.

I remember thinking (in inarticulate baby-think), "Hey, I'm crying. And nobody's coming. That's whack." I knew they were out there, but they didn't come. That had never, ever happened before and I didn't like it. A lot.

I didn't think to ask my mother about it until I was in my twenties. She was amazed. "You couldn't possibly remember that — that's the night you were weaned. You were nine months old."

I know, I know. I've since met other people who claim to have memories that old, and nobody believes them, either.

Apparently, my dad decided I was going to be weaned overnight. Voilà! No bottle. You're weaned! When she told me this, my mother made her best "yeah, I'm as mad about that as you are" face, and got an "uh-huh, sure you are" face in return.

He had some excuse, my dad. My older brother got hooked on the pacifier until he was old enough to walk into the store on his own two legs and say, "I want the blue one, please." No joke. Except, he couldn't say F's until he was nearly old enough to shave, so it came out "passisier." My dad was determined he was going to have one compulsive, anal-retentive, wrapped-way-too-tight kid with stomach ulcers, just like him. Hence, the early weaning (and toilet training, but that's another story).

He got his wish, but I don't think it was for any damn fool Freudian reason. I inherited his Uptight Genes, is all.

I'm not angry or bitter or anything. I think it's interesting that one memory stuck. I mean, I have lots of early memories, but that one is improbably early. I said my first word at around that age, too. Makes me wonder if there's a relationship. If we need language to encode memory, maybe. Or if the brain's 'record' and 'play back' both mature at once.

For the record, my first word was a sentence. Surprisingly, it was "hi, Daddy!" and not, "give me my goddamned bottle, you sadistic sack of shit!"