at the dinner table, marty asked the kids if they could recall their earliest memory. immediately you saw the engines rev up past an idle as they leafed the pages of their mind's photo album backward. after just a few seconds and without looking away from the beef kabob he was working on, alex began:

ALEX
i remember when dad lost me at the zoo when i was four.

BELLA
oh, i remember that too alex! i still remember how much my hand hurt from dad dragging me behind him looking for you.

ALEX (still not looking up)
and i remember when i was five and you let go of us on the hill and we flew down to the bottom, hit that wall and flipped over on our heads.

BELLA
oh i totally remember that too alex. can you believe dad did that? not very responsible i'd say.

TROY (giving marty a glower)
can i request to play a different game?

while the stroller debacle was documented it seems losing alex at the zoo was somehow left in the editing room which might be a sign of just how traumatizing it was for not only alex, but me as well. the only other mishap i believe i never wrote about is when bella almost drowned at the pool when she was four which was mercifully left out of the earliest memories game. i know i didn't recount that one on the site given how traumatizing it was for me. this was the closest i got to even referencing it in any way. so for the people who routinely ask me what it is that i don't talk about on the site, there it is, the too scary to recount stories.