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The Mushroom Incident

By Jennifer LaRue

I’ve always been told that the average person doesn’t have the capability to recall memories before the age of three. However, this is not the case for me.

Maybe I can’t recall all the details of this memory, but I do remember something that stands out from my early childhood. My older sister (my only sister at the time) Andrea and I were playing outside in the backyard of our old house on Sycamore Street in Paris, Texas. My mother, Ella, was sitting on the back porch watching us play together when, for some reason, she had to run in the house for a second or two. She asked my sister, who is two years older than I am, to watch me while she went inside. “O.K., I’ll watch her,” said Andrea.

Not long after our mother went inside, Andrea approached me with one of the large white, spongy mushrooms that grew in our backyard. “Eat it. Eat it, Jennifer!” she taunted me.

I was only about two years old and didn’t know any better, so I bit into it. It must have tasted pretty good because I was finishing it up as Mom walked back outside. Automatically, her maternal instincts told her that something was wrong. Andrea said, “Mom, she ate a mushroom!”

She left out the part where she had talked me into it.

My mother started frantically digging what was left of the mushroom out of my mouth. She called the hospital and got a prescription for syrup of epical, which does nothing more than make the victim vomit up every last drop of whatever is in the stomach. She gave me the medicine and plunked me in the bathtub.

This is where my memory ends, thank goodness, because my parents tell me that’s when the medicine kicked in, but I was so happy, at first, that I was dancing and singing in the tub.

I’m not 100 percent sure why this is one of my earliest memories. Maybe it’s the fact that it was such a “big deal,” like an emergency. Maybe it’s because my sister had lied to our mother, knowing that I was unable to defend myself. I’ve often wondered if this is the reason that, today, I still won’t eat mushrooms. The idea may be a little far-fetched, but it’s certainly a possibility.

Jennifer LaRue is a freshman nursing student from Paris, Texas.

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