Earliest Church Memory

     Sitting comfortably in Mom's lap I was much more entertained by watching the squirming miserable little boy who had had enough of the long church service and was trying to escape his mother's lap, than by the little toy I was holding in my hands. 
    Mom took pity on both mother and son and reached into the satchel she always carried to church filled with things for me and produced a board book and handed it to the protesting tot. 
    He settled right down as his mother helped him look at all the different barnyard scenes. Her attention drifted from her now quiet child back to the sermon.
    Meanwhile I was completely interested in the goings on next to me and watched as he started picking at the red cloth binding that was holding the wooden pages of the book together. He managed to loosen a thread and kept pulling and picking. By the time church service was over for the day there was no longer a book. Only thin pieces of wood covered in pretty barnyard scenes.
    Mom tucked them back into the satchel and told Dad about it on the way home. He was quite indignant that another child had destroyed my book, but I felt quite indifferent about it. I had never been that fond of the book anyway, much preferring the ones Mom read to me at home instead of this "special" one that was saved for church.