childhood revelations

Why is it so fascinating to write about your own childhood? I started writing something a few days ago; it was meant to be about this one song that I remember hearing when I was about ten, and how I just now figured out what it was. But almost immediately it spiralled out of control into a freakin Thomas Pynchon novel about my days as a pre-teen at the roller rink. I'm still trying to find a way to stick to the point, but I don't know if I can do it...I keep thinking of new revelations about my then-self, so many aspects to life then that I only understand now. Maybe it's because it's finally far enough in the past that it's not painful to remember; I can be reconciled to who I was then. Looking back on my late teen years and closer is really tough, because in so many ways it still is who I am, and I can only focus on all the ways I hate that. This is something I noticed as a child (oh shit, here it goes again): there were some books that you had to be old enough for, not because they were particularly mature in their content, but because you yourself had to be able to distance yourself sufficiently from the subject of the book that you didn't interpret their humiliations and pratfalls as your humiliations and pratfalls. I remember getting so furious at the Ramona books at the age of seven or so--I think actually chucked one of them against the wall because I could see myself too damn clearly in it, and it drove me nuts. And yet a year later I loved them. Because I knew: it had been me in the story at one time, but it wasn't anymore.

Weird, huh?