Okay. Maybe I had something. Still skeptical, I kept with the exercise. What else would I find? What I recalled, in a fairly vivid sequence, were a number of times where I got hurt growing up - and got attention! I recalled playing ball with Dad in the backyard, diving for a ball and gashing my head on a tree stump. The next memory was of being attended to by both Dad and Mom in the kitchen while my younger brother was screaming and crying in the background. The strange thing was - I was happy! I was getting attention and that overshadowed the pain of any cut on the forehead.
After that it was relatively easy to recall a few more times I had been hurt (after all, what kid doesn't?), and most of them involved either or both of my parents. It was time to make a leap here. time to take an illogical, unsupported jump at a conclusion that suddenly seemed exactly right: I could suddenly put my seizures into a context; getting hurt was a way of getting my father's attention. Epilepsy hurt (both during and after) and maybe I was trying to get his attention!