I hope you not find this boring but I found myself reminiscing when it occurred to me that I was not really sure what it was that I remembered as opposed to what I was told many times to remember. That is where this article came from.

Have you ever thought about it? We all have memories but how many of them are actual memories and how many are simple reminders from an older sister or brother or a mother and father?

What I am saying is I have a real memory of when I was a small child sitting on my Grandmothers lap. However there are other things that I could not remember if my life depended upon it. My sister remembers things from my childhood and I have come to realize that what I remember is what she did. In other words, I do not truly remember it; I simply remember being told the story so many times that it has become a part of my childhood memories.

My sister is a sweet person who loves to tell these stories because it also takes her back to her childhood days. These are days that I share with her. Our childhoods were bonded by our relationship.

However, I still do not remember many of these things first hand. I remember that my mother told these stories, my sister told them and even my brothers remember some of them but I am simply taking their word for it because after all, some of these memories go back to my infancy.

No, I do not remember climbing through that tunnel to enter the world as a newborn. Who does? I do not remember when my mother weaned me off the bottle. I do not remember my first day of school as a first grader. I know it happened but it is all a part of a dream where there is no beginning and there is no end. It is simply a continuation of something that I do not remember ever starting. I simply am here.

As I got older things become first hand but that is because I was making more decisions of my own. Before that my mother told me when to eat… when to sleep… when to… on well, you name it.

What I can remember is that I had a mother and father who loved me. I remember the days when what I wanted more than anything else was to grow up and make my own decisions. An unfortunate memory is the fact that I was not an A student.

In fact, my grades improved in my junior year in high school after I was placed in a vocational industrial course. Shop math was much easier than some of the stuff they were trying to teach me before. I took welding shop. It would have been a well paying job had I not suffered from fallen arches while in the military.

They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. He sure did with me. Math in high school was a chore. I found it boring and I hated it and because of that I was a D student. That, in case you did not go by the alphabet for grades is barely passing. I started getting B’s in math in shop math. I found it was a useful tool. You have a four by four piece of sheet metal and you need so many pieces of a certain size. This I could do.
Can you imagine my surprise when I took the Army aptitude test and found me best suited for Army finance? After I got out of the army I went into radio as a DJ and then became a salesman part-time. Eventually I became sales manager. I was using math. Eventually as my family grew I went into insurance. I probably couldn’t remember how to rate a policy today but I did this for almost twelve years before my heart attack.

Life is a roller coaster ride. It has its peeks and its low points. One would not be exciting without the other. I believe that when I started writing my novel and realized that I had to show these peeks and low points I manufactured them. I had a mother and father that loved me in spite of my poor grades. The character, Arty is an example of what it might have been for me if I had not had such loving parents. Arty had a mother who he loved but a father who abused him, her and anyone else he could.

Without giving away too much of the plot I would like to say, sometimes as an author you say I experienced one thing but what if it had been different. Arty has vivid memories but much of my childhood memories depend on others to keep them alive.

They also depend on God. My faith started as a child. I believe it has expanded and I pray it has not gone the wrong way but what a novel I could write if I were writing about my own life.