I remember the first time I discovered blinking. I never know if other people have these realizations about their bodies or not, but I had quite a few when I was little like the time I discovered that I could hold my breath and sort of control it. But for right now, blinking. The first time I realized that I blinked and that I could control it, I was in Grandma Nolan’s living room looking into the kitchen at my parents, aunts and uncle, and grandma. I don’t know what I was doing prior to that, probably putting together a puzzle or coloring. I was probably three and a half, maybe four at the time because it was when we first moved to Loogootee from South Bend. So I was probably three and a half.

At any rate, I remember suddenly realizing that I closed my eyes very briefly every once in a while. When I waited for it to happen, it didn’t happen until my eyes started feeling really dry. I began wondering if I could make my eyes blink, and I could. It was fascinating! My body did this on its own, but I could control it as well.

After about a minute of making myself blink, I got worried that I’d have to keep doing it since I took control over it. I didn’t know if my body would start doing it again on its own. I didn’t want my eyes to dry out because that was itchy (not that I knew that what they were doing was drying out, but I did know they got itchy). So I kept myself blinking for a bit and thought that this was going to get boring very fast.

I started wondering if I was the only person who could blink. I looked into the kitchen at the adults around the table and watched their eyes. They were all blinking too, so this wasn’t just something that I could do. They didn’t seem to be thinking about it though since they were busy talking, and it was about then that I realized I had stopped forcing myself to blink, but I was blinking anyway. I felt better because that meant I wouldn’t have to keep thinking about it, that my body would go back to doing what it had been doing before. I had had the same crisis when I discovered I could control my breath but didn’t know if I’d have to keep controlling once I discovered it because I didn’t want to suffocate. Now that I had discovered blinking and had learned that it was something I could control or let my body control, I was pretty happy because I decided I had come across something that other people didn’t know about or didn’t think about.

After all my realizations, I suppose I went back to whatever it was I had been doing prior to my discovery of blinking. I don’t know why I remember that moment so clearly, but it is as clear a memory from when I was three as many of my other memories at that time when we were living in South Bend or staying at Grandma’s house before moving into the place where my parents currently live in Bramble. Why that memory stands out, I have no idea, and I doubt that most people could tell me that they’ve had similar experiences. I doubt most people ever think much about something as basic as blinking. Now that I am typing all of this up, I pause to question what this says about me and my mind if I store memories as odd as this or that I even have had reazliations as odd as this. Oh well. I don’t think I can answer that, really. I don’t know that anyone can.