I also don’t remember speaking my first words, but have been told they were “tape,” and then “audio,” and then “audio tape.” This makes sense, because my parents spent most of their lives selling audio equipment. She prefers to reminisce on my three-year-old self attempting to sing “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks, while, for no clear reason, standing behind one of the speakers connected to the hi-fi in our living room.
Unsurprisingly, that’s not one of the early life events that my mother enjoys recounting. I’m falling upon from a story above, having wandered my oblivious two-year-old self above an open trapdoor in a Manhattan supermarket. My first memory is of a concrete basement floor rising up to meet my face.
