The Alphabet Plate

Visiting on the phone with my sister, Lucy, in 2010, she imparted, “You could say the alphabet when you were four . . .”  How can Lucy remember things like that?  I still have the alphabet plate that I always thought Larry sent home from the War but later I think someone said that he gave his folks the money to buy it for me, which was a great disappointment to me.  Anyway, I always treasured it and I do think I learned the alphabet from it. 

In a letter to Shirley in 2009, I wrote: “I forgot to answer your question about the ABC plate.  YES I still have it.  It is in the dining room on the shelf with my treasured jacks from childhood in it.  DeRay and I have been sitting here trying to figure out if the ABC plate is tin or pewter.  It's banged up so we think it might be tin but its heavy and the bottom looks like pewter.  There is no identification on it. I can still remember turning it in a circle saying the alphabet.  I don't really remember eating out of it.”

Yes, I always thought Larry, who was serving our country in World War II, gave me the ABC plate. Figure this. I was born in 1936 and would have been four in 1940. We didn’t enter the World War II until 1941.  Maybe he was in the service before the war was declared.  He could have gone in right after high school. 

There is probably nobody alive to help me with this problem now. I am going to write to my double-first cousin, VeRene, Larry’s younger sister.

This I know is true. From my Baby Book in Mama’s handwriting:

Just after Jeanette turned 4 years old, she could say the ABC’s – write most of them; write her name and spell a number of words.

I guess I didn’t need the Alphabet Plate to learn the alphabet. Maybe it was just reinforcement through the years.