I’ve been a nostalgia junkie since I had my second memory. I have no memory of my second memory, but I can see my first memory so vividly that I sometimes forget that there is no physical photograph of that memory. The year was 1980. I was 3 years old (possibly not quite 3 yet), and a cloth Holly Hobbie calendar hung  on the wall in the kitchen of my childhood home. I remember  strawberries on the calendar. The light I see in my mind’s eye is the soft, light blue haze of a rainy day coming outside those front windows.

I decided to log onto the world wide web to see if I could find an image of that exact calendar. The first hit in my Google search for “Holly Hobbie” taught me that Holly Hobbie is actually the artist’s name! I imagine a lot of people were already aware of that fact, but it was news to me.

When I added “calendar” to the search, the first hit that came up was exactly the image I’ve had in my mind all these years.

“Of course!” I thought, “my dumb li’l 3 year old brain must’ve thought that bonnet was a strawberry! This is definitely the calendar, though. It’s exactly as I see it in my memory.”

I didn’t actually think those exact words, but you get the idea.

If you squint just enough you might notice, up there in the top right corner, the year 1981.

“But Joel!” you thought, “you said this memory was from 1980!”

“You’re right,” I thought, “I did say that. I must’ve been wrong about that detail all these years. I mean, it is my very first memory ever, and I was only 3 or 4 years old, so I’m bound to fudge some of the details. I was still learning! I’m sure this is the image though. I’ve maybe never been more sure about anything in my life.”

Again, I don’t think in sentences like that. It’s just a narrative device.

Anyway, I went ahead and bought the calendar, because it’s like I said to myself, “why wouldn’t you wanna own the real, physical, tangible version of your first memory? Be able to hold it in your hands after all these years. Huh?”

That’s why I don’t have a better picture of it, by the way. After the transaction was completed, eBay wouldn’t let me embiggen the picture again.

Here’s another thing that happened after the transaction was completed: I returned to the search page, and what I found there alarmed me.

I also remember this exact calendar, and it is from 1980, and now I  figure my dumb li’l 3 year old brain must’ve thought that big ol dress was strawberry, and I was wrong about it being a Holly Hobbie calendar all along. Sonofabitch!

Then I found myself wondering if it was really the calendar itself that I remembered, or if it was just the silly, folksy, homespun rhyme. There’s a 900% chance that those words appeared on at least one thing in my childhood home, and an equal chance that various relatives also had trinkets and doo-dads and walls festooned with that declaration.

For the first time ever, I considered the possibility that my First Memory was actually two memories smooshed together.

I went back to the search page again, and saw this one next:

Maybe my dumb li’l 3 year old brain thought that red dress was a strawberry. Maybe my first memory really did happen in 1980. But that would still mean that I bought someone else’s first memory instead of mine.

Then I saw this one.

I also remember this exact calendar, and if the year read either 1980 or ’81, I would swear in court that this was the calendar from my first memory.

I celebrated my sixth birthday in 1983, and a whole bunch of snapshots of memories exist between that blue-gray day in 1980 or ’81, and also these actual snapshots from my sixth birthday party.

In what is almost certainly a total coincidence, the wall on which that banner hangs is the same wall where that calendar hung in either 1980 or 1981. Speaking of that banner, it was a gift from my kindergarten class. My kindergarten teacher, Miss Baker, was awesome. She became Mrs. Dillman later in my elementary school career, but she didn’t become any less cool.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that I wore that shirt from the birthday party for my first grade picture the following September.

The point I’m trying to make, I think, is that memories are not necessarily as accurate as we like to think they are. As far as I know, I’m the first person to ever come to that realization.

I’m just kidding. Many studies have shown that, while our memories can at times be surprisingly accurate, humans remember things incorrectly a lot of the time. I’m not gonna cite sources. You can Google it if you want receipts.

If I’ve learned one thing this afternoon, it’s that the only detail I’m sure about any more, with regards to my first memory, is that the light was tinted blue. And ultimately, I decided that even if the Holly Hobbie calendar is not the specific calendar from my first memory, it’s definitely a calendar I remember, so it’s okay that I bought it. I suppose it might even be my second memory, and that’s pretty cool too.

Before we finish up, let’s skip ahead a few years. I’m in fourth grade now, and I’ve had a lot more practice remembering things since the day I noticed that vague calendar hanging on the wall in that soft blue light. The day is gray and rainy, and I’m in my classroom taking a test. My desk is across the room from the outside wall, and it faces the windows.

My gaze moves across the room, out the window, and I notice that the silhouettes of my classmates are bathed in that same hazy blue hue from 6 or 7 years before. I don’t recognize it as the same blue just then. It’s only in retrospect that I realize both memories have the same color.

My discovery as documented above makes me wonder now how much of my fourth grade memory is correct. Were we actually taking a test? Was it actually even fourth grade? I’m pretty sure it was, based on the room we were in.

The only thing I know for certain, without even a whisper of a doubt, is that both memories exist in the same blue glow.

I can’t think of any other memories that appear blue to me, but I do sometimes dream in that same blue. The blue in my dreams is less hazy and more vivid, but it makes sense that it would be.

On a different note, blue has been my favorite color for as long as I can remember, and now I find myself wondering how much the cozy blue glow of that first memory has to do with that.

I don’t know what any of this means. Probably nothing. I hope you weren’t looking forward to a satisfying conclusion.

Thanks for reading. What’s the first thing you remember? Do you have any colors associated with specific memories?