Think hard, as my mother used to say. What is the first thing you can remember? Do you remember the Valentine boxes in the classrooms? Can you recall your first teacher’s name?

The earliest thing I remember is helping my mother dig potatoes in the garden down back of the old farmhouse on the Webb Road. She had an apron on, and I remember she was cautioning me to be careful. It was hot, sunny and dusty and she was using some kind of tool with a long handle. In my mind, I know there was a baby girl in a wooden bushel basket. That must have been my sister, who was two years younger. She would have been about a year old – old enough to sit up by herself, so I must have been 3 years old or thereabouts.

That’s how a person gets started in compiling a life story. Just simply writing down the answers to some easy questions. Filling in all the statistics (birth, birthplace, parents, etc.) can come later. It’s what you can remember now that rounds out the story. Keeping one’s memory sharp is good, as one gets older.

The other day a friend and I were talking about out-of-date magazines in doctors’ offices. That triggered a memory of how full of wonder and excitement I was when I got my first pair of glasses – and to be able to finally read without holding a book four inches from my eyes. It was before I started school, and I already knew how to read. I told my friend I remembered the doctor’s office was in Westbrook, and on the coffee table he had a stack of Collier’s and Saturday Evening Posts. After Dr. Berlowitz fitted my glasses, I picked up the magazine and could actually read the caption on a cartoon, very easily. It was as much a miracle to me as cataract surgery was, more than 60 years later.

Not very exciting memories, but when one writes these little snippets down, they can be woven into a story that later generations can read and learn from. My generation won’t remember much about beautiful new bikes or expensive dolls. We were young in the years following the Depression and for the most part, grew up in the country at a time when two-income households were the exception. I do remember my favorite Christmas present was a brand new pad of paper and some charcoal sticks to draw with. Most of the time we recycled paper (especially in a family with several children) and that sketch pad of my very own was very special. Special enough to remember it decades later.

So, what is the first thing you remember and how old were you? Can you remember your first day of school, how you felt, what you wore? Did you ride on a bus? What was that like? What was the first movie you saw? Where was this? Drive-in theaters have come and gone in our lifetime and a lot of today’s kids think drive-through is the same thing as drive-in.

A few years ago when a local school closed, I was asked to come to a classroom of second-graders and talk with the kids, basically to tell them what it was like when I went to that same school in the 1940s. It wasn’t the school they were curious about, but a few of their questions triggered lots of remembrances.

One little boy asked what happened when we were “bad” in class. I recollected a small, dark supply closet where “bad” kids had their time out. Also, I told him we had to stand in a corner, facing the corner. I think he was disappointed there were no stories about being paddled.

Another child wanted to know what we (my generation) did for fun. It’s a challenge to explain Red Rover, marbles and playing school or making May baskets, to kids who carry around their own phone. I can remember life without a phone at all – and then there was the party line. But that’s another story.

Memories are important for our good mental health and for all those younger generations who, no doubt, will think we led pretty dull lives.