My Second Earliest Memory

My earliest memory is driving away from the hospital in the back seat of my grandparents' car when the recalcitrant brother was born. I was two and a half. My second memory is this. I remember being mad that the recalcitrant brother got to sleep in the crib and so I had this idea that I would climb up his dresser, into the crib, and toss him out so that I could have it back. Instead, I pulled the dresser down on top of me. The marble top on the dresser landed just over my head and cracked in two. (It's only been recently that my mom finally got it fixed.) My foot also cracked in two. I remember laying on the couch while my dad called the doctor and my mom sat on the edge of the couch crying about what a horrible mother she was. This, of course, was not true, as I'd worked very hard to sneak past her to reclaim the crib. I got a walking cast, as there really was no way to keep me off my feet at that age. And my dad took brown lunch bags, one for each day I had to wear my cast, and lined them up on the shelves in his office (which was in our house), and inside he placed one of his tube socks. Every morning I would go into his office and he would take down a paper bag, open it up, take out a sock, and decorate the socks with markers from his desk. Then he'd slip the sock over my cast and send me on my way for the day.