By Lloyd Graff
I remember virtually nothing from my early childhood. I sometimes think I was born when I was five years old. My parents told me that I did not talk until I was three. They actually thought I was retarded.
But I do remember one thing quite vividly from my early years—my mother performing dramatic readings in dialect for my sister and I in the park. She would pack a picnic lunch, we would go outside, and she would read stories, doing several voices like it was a radio performance. Her favorite was about an immigrant mother taking children to an amusement park. I had never been to such a place but she made it come alive for me.
She didn’t read from a kid’s storybook. She had a green colored “elocution” folio of short plays, and I can still feel her joy and energy when she got into character and delivered the lines to me and my sister Susan sitting in rapt attention.
When I was an adult my mother told me that those readings were a highlight of her parenting, and she cherished the yellowing books of readings as mementos of a happy time for her.
I did not do dramatic readings for my children, but I did make up stories and recount events from my own childhood. I’m starting to do it now for my granddaughters.
Kids may say they want the newest toy or doll or video game, but I think it’s the stories and the joy that will make a lasting happy imprint.
Question: What stories do you remember from your childhood?
Peter Falk reads to Fred Savage in the film The Princess Bride
My grandfather used to tell me stories about old baseball players he saw as a kid. Babe Ruth, Charlie Grimm, Kiki Kuyler, and the wonderful Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown. I remember imagining Brown”s hand and how he could grip a bat or throw to first. I still wonder what fingers he was missing.
He was missing the index finger on the right hand. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordecai_Brown
My favorite stories were from the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. I was never allowed to watch scary movies so the stories of deception and treachery were especially interesting. I would read them over and over. Then I got into an Anne of Green Gables phase. I made my little brother help me build a town we named Avon-lee in the forest behind our house complete with houses for each of us, a town hall made of grape vines, and a store. We spent days being scraped up by the blackberry bushes while trying to create our roads and would stay down there all day. It was magic.
My dad used to make up stories about 3 fictional brothers named Ooga, Mooga and Wooga. I don’t really remember what happened that much. I feel like one of the stories was about one of the brothers starting a business, maybe a lemonade stand or something.
I also remember my grandfather telling stories from World War II about fighting snakes that got into his sleeping bag.