Early Memories

I don't recall it.  But my sister tells me that, as an infant, I regularly climbed to the top of the railing of my crib, and then tumbled over and to the floor, getting a huge kick out of the experience.  One could say, then, that even at that very young age, and before I ever encountered J. Thaddeus Toad, I had a thirst for what Toad called, "Excitement!  Adventure!  Change!"

It wasn't only Toad who instilled that sense in me; there were environmental factors that contributed to it.  I was reading almost before I was talking - both at about the age of three.  On the one block on which I spent the first thirteen years of my life, one regularly heard five languages other than English (Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, and German).  And my fondest memory of early life was of my mom bathing me in the kitchen sink, with the sun shining through the window above me, and Mom sending me into paroxysms of giggles by doing "This Little Piggy" on my feet.