Remembering Your Firsts

Let me ask you a question. Can you remember the really big, important “firsts” in your life? You know what I mean – not the really big things but the little important things, like the first time you went to the movies by yourself, without an adult. Or the first time you went to the movies and they didn’t make you sit in the children’s section. Remember those “big” firsts?

How about the first pet you had? Do you remember that? I always wanted a dog, but Mama would never hear of it. Finally, one day an appetizing store in our neighborhood was having a grand opening and giving out free goldfish to customers. So, Mama came home with the goldfish in a cardboard coffee container and placed it in a milk bottle. After all, who could afford a fish bowl in those years? Besides, Mama explained to us, “The fish man once told me a goldfish loves to swim in a milk bottle.”

Nu, so who were we to doubt Mama’s word, especially when she got this information from no less a person than our fish store man?

So, every morning I got up to feed the little creature and admire its graceful movements – swimming to the top of the bottle and then down to the bottom once more. When I came home from school, I would take the milk bottle with the fish into the bathroom and fill up the bathtub with cold water to give the little fellow a chance to “stretch out,” get a little exercise. After all, what kind of life could he have had in a milk bottle?

That little fish lived for three months. I fed him every day and changed the water almost every other day. Then one night tragedy struck. The fish apparently misjudged where the top of the bottle was and accidentally jumped out of it and onto the rug. Shoen! Os fish. Who knew fish could get claustrophobia? Listen, we were kids.

Remember your very first school notebook? I’ll never forget that first experience when I entered first grade. A few days before school started, Mama took me with my sisters to the candy store to buy our school supplies. Oy, what excitement! There must have been a million kids buying books and pencils and papers. Everybody was getting ready for school. I felt like I was an adult.

Mama paid three cents for my first little notebook. Remember those thin little notebooks with the Rorschach Test designs on the front cover? How proud I felt. My sister carefully printed my name on the front cover and it was mine. My very first schoolbook! I felt 10 feet tall.

By the second day of school, that book looked like it came through the Battle of Waterloo, but it was mine.

And how about the first briefcase? A few days before I entered second grade, I got a real briefcase. I felt like such an adult, as if I were an executive with an office and a secretary.

I needed a briefcase like I needed a hole in the head, but it was all about social status. After all, the big kids all had one. I felt so grown-up schlepping that briefcase with one little notebook inside to school every day. And once in school, it was our ritual to take out the notebook and leave the briefcase in the aisle for the teacher to trip over as she walked around to check our homework.

Remember the next tenant in the briefcase, the pencil case? We never really had to buy one; we always got one for free when we bought a pair of shoes shortly before school opened. Remember those special pencil cases with one pencil, two crayons and a ruler? The pencil case really filled out the briefcase and added to our status.

And how about that first subway ride, alone, without an adult? Remember that experience? I’ll never forget it. I was supposed to go after school to the place where Papa worked. His boss wanted me to come in to help Papa, who was a cutter of ladies’ coats, lay up yards and yards of material on a cutting table. Mama and Papa gave me such detailed instructions that anyone could have gotten there.

The only thing they forgot to put down on the paper was which side of the station I was supposed to wait for the train. So naturally, if you have two choices, like a dummy, I took the uptown train and rode around for nearly three hours before I realized something was wrong. Finally, a conductor aimed me in the right direction and I wound up at Papa’s place just about the time he was supposed to leave. So, we came home together. But the fact that I got there – that was the important thing!