What Makes a Memory Memorable

 What makes someone or something worth remembering? I can remember when I was very young, maybe 4 years old, we lived in an apartment complex in Atlanta, my brother Buck and I would play in the back yard and one day a little black boy came over near the fence that separated our neighborhoods, his name was Otis, he was wearing a pair of denim overalls, I thought he was just the prettiest little thing, his skin was the color of a Hershey bar. We played through that fence for a couple of days until someone asked the other to come onto their side of the fence and  I remember going to ask Mother if we could go there and she said that we had to stay on our side of the fence, Otis asked his Mom too, I guess it was a good thing they both said no, we never saw the end of that fence and could possibly have walked for days looking for it, and it looked 10 feet tall to us little 'uns. I wonder if somewhere this now grown man ever remembers the little white kids on the other side of the fence. I can't ask Buck if he remembers, but I do sometimes wonder what makes that so memorable. I know some things we remember because of trauma, like the time when I was three and nearly cut my finger off playing in the bathtub, I don't remember pain, but I remember blood...everywhere and Mother having to leave us home alone to go use a phone to call Daddy home to take me to the hospital, neighborhood kids were on the porch wanting to see the hand and I pressed it against the window leaving a bloody print, I remember them strapping me down to sew it up and apparently I was screaming bloody murder (pun intended) as the saying goes because I remember the nurse asking me if I wanted her to gag me and I stopped kicking and screaming long enough to ask her what that was, she told me, I just wanted my Mother, I was still a baby really, just three, that's all I remember so it got sewed up gag or no. I know some things I remember because I was told to, Mother holding me on her hip pointing to a dot moving across the sky and telling me to remember it because I'd want to tell my children about it one day, I remember that but not what the dot was, I remember the word "sputnik" but surely it wasn't that, this had to have been in late '60 or early '61 and I think sputnik was gone by then, maybe it was Yuri Gagarin orbiting the Earth...hmmm. I have used Mother's words to my own children, when Challenger exploded in 1986, my oldest son was home from school sick, the youngest was napping, when the explosion happened I turned on the TV so we could watch it together and I told him to remember it because he'd want to tell his children about it one day, I don't know if he remembers but I remember telling him. We have so many things going on in the world these days, I wonder what our children and grandchildren will remember. I sure hope I'm around when they grow up to ask them, and ask what made it worth remembering.