My first memory

Marcelo Leitão
3 min readJan 13, 2021

Everybody got that first memory, is from that memory you consider you are born, not your birthday but your memory you can’t remember anything before that is like waking from a dream. So my first memory is going to Spain on vacation, with my parents and my baby brother, in the car I was playing with a Gameboy color Super Mario Bros all way until my batteries run out and to distract me my father start to go to the side of the road to make that noise to wake up the drivers and warn them, I find it very funny so for like an hour or something we laugh for that silly noise. All the drivers behind should think my father was drunk because he was driving in S shape. In the middle of time, I probably fell asleep and when I wake up I was already in the hotel room somehow when we are younger we have that superpower: fell asleep in one place and wake up in the other. When you are older you only achieve that if you got really drunk. So we are in the hotel room and was a day before my birthday so my parents decide to eat in the restaurant. Unlucky for my parents me and my brother didn’t like the food either water. So they run to a supermarket in the middle of Spain to buy veggies to do a soup and the result was we didn’t like it again. Probably was the water but I will have problems with the water I promise to you. The next day, we all went to the pool, in the majority of the hotels you have a kid’s pool and “adults” pool. The great difference between these 2 was the fact the children’s pool didn’t have a tile around it, that is, the grass /dirt reached the pool so that pool was a mix between water and mud but as a kid, you don’t mind to play their, you think it’s funnier and stupid “me” jump to the kid’s pool. That night my ears started to hurt a lot, was like a drill in my head was such a weird pain, makes me cry. So what i thought probably was that dirt/MUD/water and if bad water gives me pain good water gives me health. So I am in the kitchen in the middle of the night drinking a lot of water for the pain to pass obviously a fail plan. My dad saw that ridiculous plan, ask what I have after I finish telling him he pick me and we start searching for a doctor, in the middle of the night, in another country, without the internet because was 1998. After a while, for me was like an eternity because the pain keeps growing, we find a doctor. Was a smile and very helpful, she examines me look to my dad and said “Tiene una batatita en la oreja”. My mind “how the hell a potato grow in my ear so fast?! that water and that mud!”. So i freak out a little bit my dad is confused she smiles again and said “Otitis”. My dad looks relieved but my ear still hurts A LOT!! She passes some medication and finishes “Eres un buen chico el dolor passará”. I took the medication fell asleep the next day I was brand new, strong like an iron happy as ever but never enter in that creepy mud/water again. The result of this: gain otitis for more than 7 years, use ears protector (lost 2 every summer) and this is my first memory.

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Marcelo Leitão

Documenting a journey! Figuring out new ways to do the same thing!