Dunno, don’t remember much. I was three. My most salient memory was slobbering all over the microphone, and being really fixated on a question about whether an event occurred before or after my birthday. I was looooving the attention.
It was a case where the defendant had already pled guilty, and I was the victim. He was my stepdad. I do remember talking to a social worker at some point before that. Not really sure what me being there added to the picture, other than making people angrier than they already were. I had no idea what was going on. My Mom said I knew things that no child should know, but I don’t remember any of what actually happened to precipitate the lawsuit. I even told him I loved him on the witness stand (according to my mother, when asked to point him out, I waved and said, ‘‘Hi, Dad! I love you!’’) He went away for a long time.
Thus the beginning of my statistically improbable childhood.
I’m not even kidding when I say I was totally clueless. I was far too young to understand the nature of the situation. I didn’t understand that what he’d done was wrong or abuse, I was just sitting up there in front of all these people getting all this attention. I have no doubt my total obliviousness was part of the decision to let me testify. This was a far, far more traumatic experience for my mother than it was for me.
I would have to clean the silverware drawer organizers to use them during Passover. Cleaning for Passover the way we do it also necessitates dunking all the utensils in boiling water. I don’t really want to clean the organizers or spend a lot of time putting the newly boiled silverware back into them. So I just throw the silverware into the drawer (lined with foil) for the duration of the holiday (which is 8 days for us).
We gradually put the silverware back into the organizers, as it gets washed, after Passover. But that’s Mr. Neville’s job anyway- I load the dishwasher, he empties it.
Apparently (from another thread) I’m the only person who ever asked my friends’ parents for permission on behalf of my friend, rather than asking the friend herself, e.g. “Friend’s Parent, is it okay if I spend the night?” rather than “Hey, Friend, ask your mom if I can spend the night.”
Not that there was never a conversation between me and the friend but, if a friend asked if she could stay for dinner and I said “Yeah, if my parents are okay with it.”, the expectation would be that she would ask my parents, not me. That’s just how everybody did it.
This is apparently a totally foreign idea to everybody else.