How far back can you remember?

Lately, I have been trying to see how far back in my life I can remember. I seem to remember being caught in New Bedford's Buttonwood Park when I was 3 or 4. My Uncle Allen and my Great Uncle Will found me after I ran away from my home on Borden Street, about two miles away.

Elaine says she remembers her father catching a giant snapping turtle when she was between 1 and 3 years old.

Some people think that we are reincarnated and that we can remember events from our former lives for a year after we are born, when the memories fade away. Under hypnosis, some people have told about prior lives. (See: Bridey Murphy)

Knowledge from prior lives has been suggested as a reason that some children are idiot savants. These are people who can do fantastic mathematic puzzle solving. For instance, ask an idiot savant what 34792918 times 2397564 equals and they can immediately answer: 83,418,247,651,752. How do they do it?

My Grandfather told me I was an idiot savant when I was around 4 years old. I can remember people giving me complicated problems in addition, subtraction and multiplication and I can remember giving them an immediate answer. I'm sure I just made up the answers through no mental effort and they probably liked playing along with me. But did I make up the answers? I'll never know, because the exercises came to a halt when I began to go to kindergarten. Nobody gave me any more challenging problems until I took Algebra in High School.

My Cousin Charlie and I were in the same class and had a competition going to get the highest grade in the class. Every day we competed in Mr. Worden's class. He was a nice guy and I think it did his ego good to see Charlie and me showing what we had been learning in his class. Mr. Worden didn't know that we were cousins.. we waited until the last day of school to tell him.

Math came very easy for Charlie and he was able to master all aspects of it. He earned a PhD in Physics and co-authored procedures that have helped physicists solve mind-bending problems. I gave math up after that class, even though I have it as one of my life goals to learn some of maths higher aspects, such as calculus.

When I was about 7 years old, I discovered cartoons.. the family subscribed to the Saturday Evening Post and each time it arrived I would cut out all of the cartoons and keep them in separate piles by cartoonist. Then, I would copy and learn the style of each cartoonist. For example: Otto Soglow, who drew rather simplistic figures that were kind of easy for me to copy.. does anyone remember "The Little King?" Remember the simplified ermine robe and the easy-to-draw crown: three circles with a triangle on top. Or Virgil Partch (VIP) who drew people with gigantic noses.

This copying was fun for me, but it didn't do much for me. Now, 67 years later, I am still a copier. Unfortunately, my cartoons are never original.

Elaine is a great caption writer. Each week, the New Yorker magazine has a caption contest. They publish a special cartoon by one of their many contributing cartoonists. This special cartoon usually shows weird juxtapositions of activity and has no caption. It is left up to the New Yorker reader to supply one. Elaine has been doing so for several years. I personally find her captions to be head and shoulders above the ones that are picked as winners. She has a gift, and someday she will win the big prize.

This gives me an idea... to gain the originality that I desire in my cartoons, why don't I draw some off-beat cartoons and let Elaine put the captions on them. She can be my "originality fairy."

Granddaughters Kaitlin and Bridget are into Anime.. the Japanese comics art form. And they are good at the procedure. Their father, Chris, has a gift for cartooning, but I can't convince him to try to do it full time. I don't think he really knows how good he is.

Great Grandson Cameron, at 5 years old, is already showing a talent for drawing. I hope that we can encourage him in this path.

Well, I start with a subject to stick to in these blogs, but I get sidetracked. So be it!