...of assorted and unrelated childhood memories, before I move on to the fun medical stuff.
Memory: Playing "shopping" with, among other things, some plastic vegetables. This was before I could write, quite possibly even before I could read, so my "shopping lists" were just rows of squiggly lines
Memory: Blanketforts in the family room, made by putting four high-backed kitchen chairs in a square facing outward, and draping a sheet over the top. It would have been improved, perhaps, with some pillows, but they still were nice and cozy.
Memory: My first violin lesson -- I had asked to learn to play, in large part because my sister did, so this wasn't forced on me -- and my teacher was a gruff old man who intimidated the heck out of me. He asked me to play the A string, as part of making sure it was in tune I suppose, and I just remember staring at him in paralyzed confusion because there were four strings and I didn't have a clue which one he wanted me to play.
(I have no idea how old he actually was; at that age, most adults were old. I also have no idea how scary he actually was, since I was shy and easily intimidated. He was a good teacher, though, and it was from him that I picked up the phrase/concept "practice makes permanent". You have to practice right in order to get better. Not necessarily perfect on the first try -- though being a perfectionist at heart I expected that of myself and got frustrated with myself when I couldn't -- but that doing the same mistake over and over again without correcting it would just ingrain it. Practice only makes perfect when you practice well.)
Memory: a computer game that my mom liked to play, called Daleks. At this point I knew nothing about Doctor Who, so the names meant nothing. It's also worth pointing out that this had to have been early 80's, so very early in home computer use, very early in computer games, a step above plugging an Atari system into the TV and playing Pac-man or Pong or Space Invaders. The game was black and white with very primitive graphics.
Here's how it played: You were the Doctor, and could move around one step at a time using arrow keys. There were also Daleks on the screen, increasing in number (and therefore complexity and difficulty) as you passed each level. For each step the Doctor took, all Daleks would take a step towards him. If a Dalek caught you (by landing on your square) you were dead. However, if two Daleks collided, they both died and left behind a heap of ashes, and if a Dalek collided with a heap of ashes it would also die. They would always move directly towards the location of the Doctor, so the idea was to line things up so that two Daleks would go into the same space, or else keep an ash pile between you and a Dalek. Once you had turned all the Daleks into little piles of ash, the level would clear and you would move on to the next level with more Daleks. There was also a sonic screwdriver that you could use (I believe it had a limited number of charges for the entire game) that would teleport you to a random location; useful as a last ditch measure if you were surrounded, although there was a chance (that got higher as more Daleks appeared) that it would teleport you to a square next to a Dalek, and since the screwdriver teleport counted as a move, you would die.
Memory: This game terrified me. Then again, so did Pac-man. I didn't like games that involved things chasing me, I think. Especially since the closer to doom I got, the more I froze up and freaked out. It's not the fact that loss was inevitable that scared me -- I didn't have problems with Tetris or any of its spinoffs -- and I'm not sure exactly what the problem was. Just that it bothered me. A lot.
Memory: To go with the technology theme (yes, we did have an Atari), I remember as a child having a rotary-dial phone. White, with the curly sort of telephone cord that likes to kink up, and with a receiver that made a very satisfying thunk when you hung up. Yes, we did eventually switch to a button-dial phone, and later even got (ooooh) cordless phones, but I remember the rotary dial.
Then again, I'm not entirely sure whether it was in use in our house as the main phone, or just as something for us to play with.
Memory: Programming using Turtle LOGO. I think this was third grade or so. Yes, I started being a programming geek quite early on. I also have a memory, perhaps conflated of multiple events, of working on Turtle LOGO stuff while the class was watching an animated movie of Rikki Tikki Tavi, because the movie scared the living daylights out of me. Especially one bit where one of the cobras is looking at (and plotting out how to get to and bite) the nice juicy calves of the boy of the family as he sits at the dinner table. Which left me a fear for years of a cobra living under my bed wanting to bite me. Especially if I got up to use the bathroom at night. Which led to a lot of "flush, run, leap into bed" practice for me.
Memory: Being in a spelling bee and losing on the word "handkerchief". I think I got it mostly right, but left out the d -- understandable since it's basically pronounced hangkerchiff, but frustrating because I wanted to win.
Did I mention I was maybe a little bit of a perfectionist?
(Kind of like the ocean is maybe a little bit wet.)
My mom tells a story (of which I remember nothing but it sounds plausible) of me in second grade coming home upset because I didn't get the highest score on a math quiz. Now, it is supremely relevant that I a) started school early (my birthday was towards the end of the cut-off, so I was one of the younger children in my year anyway), and b) got bumped from kindergarten to first grade (mid-year, fairly easy to do because it was a combined K-1 class) because I was so bored I was refusing to go to school. Which meant that by second grade, as well as through the end of college, I was up to two years younger than my classmates. Which sort of matters when your classmates are seven and eight and you're only six ... but I wasn't particularly consoled for the fact that I was doing well for my age. Because I needed to be perfect.
(Spoiler alert: I have not lost my sense of perfectionism. I am getting better at talking it down, but it's still there and quite insistent.)
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