Think for a moment...describe your very first memory.
Was it a Dream?
I was born on July 25, 1967 while my folks were on vacation, ironically in New York State. I say it is ironic, because my father is a life-long Red Sox fan, and there I am, being born in Yankee Country. My earliest memory involves the Sox. Red Sox fans will long remember the 1967 Impossible Dream season, which saw the long defeated Red Sox go from last place in 1966 to first place in 1967. Captain Carl "Yaz" Yastrzemski won the Triple Crown. The fact that the Sox ended up losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games did not diminish the magnitude of the accomplishment.
My folks lived in a mobile home park in Westfield, Massachusetts at the time, living in an old mobile home that my grandmother had given them when they married less than a year before my birth (for the record, I was a premie, and they were legally married before my conception!). My dad endeavored to paint the exterior of this mobile home while the Sox were heading into the World Series. Nearly 41 years later, as I sit at my computer, I can close my eyes and see the image of my dad standing on a ladder outside the mobile home, painting away. I can almost hear the sound of the game in my memory, as he listened to the Sox in the '67 World Series. I was less than 2 months old at the time.
I may not be able to remember what my wife asked me to do five minutes ago, but I'll never forget that image. Some have suggested it was just a dream, but I don't think so. For starters, I have some other very clear images from my early childhood (including one when I tried to eat an entire rattle whole) and playing in a parking lot at an apartment complex where I lived immediately after the mobile home.
So maybe it was or maybe it wasn't just a dream, but I'll say this - my dreams came true in the fall of 2004 when the Sox swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series since 1918!
