Monday memory

I love alliterations. You will have to humor me with my Monday memory.

Apparently, one of my earliest memories happened when I was three, or maybe four. My mother thinks I was three. I don't remember how old I was. I remember where I was and what I was doing.

We lived in a house that was built in the 1950s and it had an addition on the back that made it larger than it used to be. In the 1970s, I didn't know it was built 20 years before. It was the first house I remember as a kid. It was the one I lived in during elementary school. It was my first home, the one where I fought with my littler brother and sister, played in the church playground behind our house and walked from to get to elementary school.

My grandmother was visiting; it was my mom's mom. I suppose that my grandpa was there too, but I just remember she and my mom were in the kitchen. The kitchen had flat blue carpet with a pattern of rectangles all over it in different blue colors. I think the kitchen's overall color was blue.

I wanted to be helpful. So I went out the kitchen door, down a few stairs to the landing by the door to the outside. Then I turned right and went down into the basement. The basement was a bit dark. It was where we kept our Pepsi, in bottles. Remember the six pack holders, a bit bigger than the six pack beer bottle holders we have today?

I grabbed two bottles and made it upstairs to the landing by the door to the outside. The door to the kitchen at the top of a short flight of stairs was closed. I remember thinking that it was going to be hard to get the door open while I was holding two 16 oz Pepsi bottles in my hands. At that very same moment, I tripped on the short flight of stairs and landed on my knees, breaking the bottles and getting pop everywhere.

I must have started crying, too, and I remember my mother coming out the door swiftly, with Grandma right behind. I don't remember much that happened after that. I must have been cut up, because I still have a small white scar on my left forearm from that accident. All I remember is being really disappointed because I messed up getting the pop bottles upstairs for mom and grandma to drink. No one had asked me, but I had wanted to be helpful. The trauma and the grave disappointment I had in myself are probably what makes this memory still vivid in my mind.