Undeveloped Critical Powers

My second earliest memory is an odd one. Odd because, even at this distance in time, I still remember what my thought processes were. I think I must have been about 4 or 5.

There were these chocolate candies. I knew they were chocolate because they were almost the same color and they were just a little larger than Good & Plenty candies. The problem was that I wasn't allowed to have any. My parents had some everyday and they seemed to really pleased with themselves afterward. I figured they had to be really good if they were so selfish as to not share them with me.

So one day when all was quiet, I got up into the cabinet and got the jar. I think I hid behind the sofa or someplace similar. I unscrewed the cap and smelled it. It didn't smell like candy, it smelled more like burning plastic. That wasn't going to stop me.

I reached in and pulled out one of the maroon "candies" and bit it. It was squishy. Then all of a sudden it popped. There was something yellow and goopy inside and it splattered a bit. Even at the time I remember thinking that it looked like pus.

There had to be something good about it though ... so I took a fistful and swallowed them. I think I probably repeated that a couple of times. It tasted terrible and the "candies" got stuck in my throat.

My parents found me, wherever it was I was hiding with an empty bottle of the old maroon gelatin vitamin pills. That's where my memory ends, but I have been told that the rushed me to the hospital. I have a fragmentary memory of a tube going down my nose so that they could pump all those vitamins out of my stomach.

It certainly was not my finest hour.