When Did That Happen Parts 1 & 2

A True Story of Repressed Memories
By Emerald Green [Nick named: Em]

To anyone looking for adult language, explicit adult situations, or child abuse skip to Part 2. If you would be offended by any of that you should stop reading before Part 2

Part 1

I grew up in the time before television and video games. Yes my children there was a time before television and video games. I hear your question…what did you do when you got home from school…what did you do all evening? The first thing I did when I got home was to change into my chore clothes and I did my chores. Then I did my school homework followed by dinnertime followed by the highlight of the day—story time. From the time of my earliest remembrance, every evening someone would tell a story. Sometimes more than one story would be told. They were usually stories about some episode in a family member’s life. It might be about how my grandparents met or about seeing Billy the Kid. It might be about the Pullman Strike or a hail storm that killed cattle and wiped out the crops. There were happy stories and sad stories but mostly they were stories of perseverance.
Important stories were told and retold and after hearing a story numerous times a child was expected to tell the story. If any detail was left out or incorrect, it would be corrected immediately. In this way oral histories would be passed on as reliably as if they had been written down.
Intermingled among the family stories were short stories involving humor and often with a moral. These were mainly for entertainment. After the conclusion of most new stories my sister, who was ten years older than me, would often ask, “When did that happen.” If it was a true or family story, an explanation occurred but if it was for entertainment the story teller would say, “It happened before we had you.” One day when I was probably five I launched into a story about my little dog running off and getting lost. I had to search after him, wearing my wide brimmed hat for protection from the hot sun as I crossed a desert in Mexico. I went into detail about avoiding the cacti and fighting off a mountain lion, coyotes, and wolves. When I concluded the story by telling about how I brought my dog home, fed, and watered it, my sister asked, “Em, when did that happen?” My response was, “Before we had you.” Thus a new story was born which I heard told many times to aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents when they came to visit.
Visiting relatives was the way that our family took vacations. Most often they would come for a week or we would go stay for a week. It was a rare month that passed without a visiting relative. This was always a good time during which stories would be exchanged. Most families were larger than ours which consisted of my parents, my sister, and me. If my count is correct, I had four grandparents, twenty-two aunts and uncles and 34 cousins, all older than me.
The point is that many, many stories were told, and remembered. Of course some events disrupted our story telling. World War II was a big disrupter. I was 11 when it started. Nearly every adult, who did not go to war, worked at shift work at a war industry. We lost three members in the war, one uncle and two cousins.