Chapter One: Childhood Innoncence

Here is the first chapter of my autobiography that I've decided to write:

How many of us can honestly say that we remember our childhood? Not one of us can, that’s how many. If you want to look at it from a psychological point of view, we weren’t cognitively able to form memories until around the age of 3 I would say. I remember things from my childhood, but most of them are in my mind as an onlooker looking at me while these events occurred. I don’t remember them from my own memory; I remember them from a changed standpoint; like a fleeting story caught on the wind that you have to stretch to remember.
I was born in Longmont, Colorado to Waunita Palmer and Augustine Gamble. I did not know that Auggie was my father until about my junior year of high school, which I will get to later. I don’t know much about my childhood at this time from about the age of birth to 2 years. All I have of what I looked like when I was a child was a picture that my mom had taken in one of those Wal-Mart photo shops that look cheesy and tacky because that’s just what they are: cheesy and tacky. I was a happy looking child. I had a cute chubby face with big bright brown eyes and a pudgy little body and legs with non-existent ankles. I would wear those water shoes like they were the coolest thing in the world (or so my mother told me). She still has those, to this day, in her office and she brings them out every now and then to show how much my feet had grown.
All I know from this time period was that my mother lived with her mother, Phyllis Palmer, in a nice pink (and yes, I do mean tickle-me-pink pink) house on Lincoln St. in Longmont. I loved that house. I remember that my mother and I lived in the basement of that house. I vaguely remember my bedroom being right next to my mother’s. I had a blue racecar bed overflowing with stuffed animals ranging from bears to cartoon characters. I had two in particular that were my favorite: Ducky and Sonic the Hedgehog. Those two stuffed animals were my favorite things on the planet and I dubbed them best friends. Ducky was a little gray duck that had a purple shirt and a matching ball cap. Sonic looked just like the cartoon character but he always had mangled hands because I would chew on him endlessly.
This house was beautiful, if I remember correctly, and I dearly wish that we still lived there. This house had a great big tree out front on the lawn which was always really gorgeous. I used to drive by that house every once in a while when I would visit friends and see how much more beautiful it has gotten. Some days I want to knock on the door and say “I used to live here, would it be okay if you let me in to look around?” but I know that would be terribly inappropriate. But I digress; this house was magnificent. I remember that it was a split level house, one of those where you walk in and you either have to go upstairs or downstairs. Upstairs and to the left consisted of a living room, I think, which had two brown couches with blue flowers on them and an old T.V. set in the corner of the room. If you go straight from the landing of the stairs you would find yourself in the kitchen. All I remember of the kitchen was watching soap operas with my grandmother Phyllis while eating a plate of spaghetti. To the right of the landing were bedrooms I believe. My memory is a little fuzzy of what this house looked like. However, there are two very distinct memories that stick out in my mind of this house. The first pertains to the balcony that overlooked the stairs leading down into the basement of the house. See, we had this cat. I was obsessed with the movie Free Willy when I was a kid, and even to this day. I would watch at least five or six times a day, and that’s not an exaggeration. But again, and probably not for the last time, I digress. We had this gray male tabby cat that was my only friend for a while named Jesse, after the main character of Free Willy, that I adored. That cat was my best friend when I was a kid. The one memory I have of him to this day is how I would torture the hell out of him. I guess I never realized that dropping a cat off of that balcony down into the basement probably hurt it…but that cat still loved me, I think. I certainly loved him, and I never realized that it might be hurting him to drop him down those stairs, but that is one of the memories that stick out most vividly to me. The other memory involves those same stairs, but I feel like this might be lasting karma for the torture that I made my cat endure. When I was two, I made a big mistake. Now, when I remember this in my head, I don’t remember it as it happened to me. I remember it as someone standing over the landing of the stairs and looking down on me. But anyways, when I was two, I decided I would be a stuntman and ride my tricycle down a flight of split level home stairs. That was not the smartest decision I made. Needless to say, it ended in a bloody mess of my face meeting the door, and me losing the only tooth that had grown in at that point. My aunt, who was my primary babysitter at that point, mostly because she would work for free and because she was there all time, called my mother at work and I was promptly rushed to the hospital. I don’t remember much of that, but what I do have is a lasting scar from that experience: my crooked teeth.
This house was the first thing that I remember as a kid. I remember living there with my mother, aunt, and Granny, but I don’t know if anyone else lived there at the time. I do know, from stories that my mother told me, that Granny was my best friend. I was with her all the time that I could be. I never ever left her side. We would watch soap operas together, and I would talk in gibberish the entire time while she watched her soaps. I remember her face, but only because we have a picture of her that my mother keeps in her bedroom now. She was a beautiful woman, and she looks so much like my aunt Cassie that it’s uncanny. However, my Granny suffered from colon cancer. I don’t know when she was diagnosed with it, but I do know that she had it. I never knew, or if I did know I didn’t understand it. I never left her side though. My mom told me that I was always with her, every second of the day. I remember that we moved out of that pink house and into a brown mobile home in the same town. My Granny was dying, but at that age, I didn’t understand that. I don’t know why we moved out of the pink house into this dingy mobile home, but I trust there was a good reason. I only have a few memories of what happened in that household. I remember walking in on my aunt Cassie and her boyfriend at the time: Chris having sex. I didn’t understand what it was at the time, but I do remember being set down on the counter of the kitchen of the house and being apologized to by a shirtless Chris.
Granny wasn’t healthy. I think that my mom and aunt knew that her time was short, and that she was going to die soon. Now that I look back, I wish that I had been older so I could at least remember her voice. She was like a second mother to me, and I really do miss her. I hope that she is proud in Heaven, and that she is looking down on me with a smile. I’ve always thought I’ve had a guardian angel. I know that everyone says that they have one, but I’ve seen some crazy shit in my life that most people haven’t, and I think it was her holding me close. I think it was her holding me and making sure I was safe. I only remember a few things about her death, and they again were stories that my mom told me. My mom told me that Granny had to wear this contraption on her that would regulate her bowel movements. I still don’t know what it was that it was supposed to do, but essentially it was a bag that was slung around her waist to collect…well…fecal matter. My mom said that when I was a kid, I would walk around with a plastic King Soopers bag around my waist so I could be “like Granny!” Looking back on it now, I know that I had good intentions with the bag, but I wonder if it pained my Granny to look at me emulating her terminal illness. I don’t think she did. My Granny was a very caring and wonderful individual from what I remember. I haven’t thought about her in years until I started writing this, and I feel bad about that, but I can’t remember her very well. I do miss her though, and I look forward to the day when I can look at her beautiful face and the beautiful face of my God when I go to Heaven. I miss you Granny, but I know that you are looking at me now as I write this, and I hope I’ve made you proud. I know that I have made some mistakes in my life and I know that I have some pretty big regrets, but I think that I’m headed in the right direction. I just want to make you and Mom happy. I love you, and I can’t wait until the day when I get to meet you all over again.