How would you begin?

Random thought that has been kicking around inside of my head – “If you had to write your own story, how would you begin?”

In other words, what would the first sentence of your autobiography be?

I don’t know why this has suddenly become important to me. But it seems to be where my mind goes when I am not thinking about something else, lately.

My last post included a mini-autobiography to help illustrate the sense of loss that I was feeling about the possibility that a portion of my history might disappear from my life. It got me to thinking.

I think that I would start with this

“I don’t think that I knew that we were poor when I was young. We didn’t ‘go without’ to any extent that I noticed, but we didn’t have ‘extra’, either.”

I suspect that we weren’t “poor” by the strictest definition, but we were definitely lower middle class. My dad was military, and mom didn’t start working outside the home until I was in the 4th or 5th grade.

When I noticed that we weren’t keeping up with the Jones’, it was over little things. I was super jealous of the kids whose lunchtime sandwiches were packed in ZipLock baggies instead of the Glad sandwich bags that we used. Or the kids that had Oreos in their lunch, while we had Nilla Wafers.

When late summer “school shopping” rolled around, we often started in the “Bargain Basement” at Sears or JC Penney. But it never felt weird. Most of the kids that I hung out with were in exactly the same situation.

I think it’s a credit to my parents that we were able to be poor without feeling poor.

How would you begin?