What I used to call my first memory was the time my sister and I (ages five and two) walked up the road to a gas station and bought a bottle of pop. I know it was a real memory, instead of something someone told me, because it had an inner dimension: I pretended the pop was beer and I was a man. Now I remember only the memory of that day.
So maybe my earliest memory was when we burned down the outhouse, a three-holer, while my mom, dad, and I were sitting there in a row, taking our last outdoor shit right inside the flames. But even though we did have a three-seater when we first moved to the farm, and though we did burn it down when my dad put in the indoor plumbing, I think I dreamed the incident before I was old enough to distinguish reality from vivid dreams.
