Your favorite childhood memory, in one sentence:

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

Your favorite childhood memory, in one sentence:

Certain students obeyed the structure of the question, replying with a complete sentence:

• 4 kids make a mess in a muddy backyard.
• Carrier has arrived.
• Summer Camp is awesome!
• That's personal!
• I ate a banana
• I was bad at softball
• A TV gave me a concussion
• oh god why are there so many ferrets

Others only left sentence fragments, abandoned noun or verb phrases left dangling, their tenuous wisps reaching back into memory:

• climbing trees
• soccer games
• breaking my femur
• summer with grandparents
• going on field trips
• playing
• figuring out how to use a water fountain
• vacation in Thailand
• infantile amnesia
• video games
• [illustration of a ghost chasing pacman eating dots]
• corner
• go karting
• spending time with family
• playing with dogs
• scoring winning soccer goal
• going to beach
• carefree summers

My cold, robotic, grown-up professor grinch heart is warmed by these snippets of lives happily remembered. I'm curious about why "breaking my femur" would be one's favorite childhood memory, but I suppose context counts for quite a bit in comparing memories...


This post's theme word is defervescence, "the abatement of a fever." I vividly remember being sick in childhood, but the gradual defervescence left no distinct impression.