The First Memory

I've been going to demolition derbies my entire life. No joke. In recent years we've been able to go to at least once a year, and I hope that's a tradition we can continue. It's the one setting I can stomach listening to country music. That and the dry cleaners I used to work at but even then, as soon as the boss was out the door, the channel was changed.

This year we got to go to our demolition derby last week. Oh, I suppose I need to explain what a demolition derby is for you "civilized folk". It's where a bunch of red necks take a bunch of beat up, long gone cars, and transform them into machines of destruction, built to ram into other cars until their wheels fall off, and even sometimes still keep going after that. I've seen it happen. These things defy physics.

I'm a nice girl. I keep my nails trimmed nicely. I do my hair and wear deodorant. I floss daily. I like to eat salad. Book stores smell amazing to me. I like Norah Jones as much as the next girl. As you can tell, floral things are nice to me. I love videos of puppies and going to IFA to cuddle the baby bunnies is my favorite past time. I get very sad when children cry. And I get really upset when my shoes get splashed with mud on the way to school.

That being said, I think I'm a queen of destruction. Most people wouldn't suspect how very dark my dark side is. And that dark side loves hollering at cars crashing into each other shouting "YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" when the green truck with gold wheels gets flipped on its back.

I wouldn't say this is entirely my fault, and this leads us to my earliest memory. Pretty sure this early memory was shaping to me. My dad was carrying me, walking me through a graveyard of broken cars. It was dark. People had paint on their face, or at least I thought they did. It may have just been dirt and ash though. The cars were on fire all around us. There was loud noises coming from every direction. To my mind, I was pretty sure I was in hell. And that was my first memory. It should be added that I was 18 months old at the time.

You can take the girl out of the demolition derby, but she'll keep going back to them once a year anyways. That sounded a lot smoother in my brain.