Wait, I Had a Childhood?

Anyone who has tried to get me to remember something from my past will know that my memory ceases to function if it's been longer than a month ago.  I won't recognize dementia or alzheimer's until I'm being put in a home.  Sad, really, but there it is.

Yesterday, I was chatting with my niece and she was saying things like, "Do you remember when we would go and buy as much penny candy as we could and then we'd go back to your house and put them in baggies and sell them out of the "store" in your brother's room?"

I just went with it.  "Oh yeah!  That was fun."

She laughed at me because I obviously didn't have a clue.

Then she told another story.  "Do you remember the time we saved up all our money to give to this family in our neighborhood because we heard they were having a hard time?"

"No.  But that totally sounds like something I would do."

It doesn't.

She continued. "We pooled our money (along with the cousin who lived across the street from our houses) and then carved out a little pumpkin, shoved all the money inside and rode our bikes to this neighbor's house.  We put the pumpkin on the porch, rang the doorbell then jumped on our bikes, peddling like crazy to get away before she opened the door."

I remember nothing, Nothing, of this adventure in doorbell ditching.  It took me several minutes to even recognize the name of the neighbor she was talking about.  But it's nice to know that I was such a great kid.

 I hope my mother was paying attention to that story because her memory is as bad as mine and, if nothing else, I want her to realize just how wonderful I really was.