Remember

Remember what you learned in kindergarten:
* Share everything.
* Play fair.
* Don't hit people.
* Put things back where you found them.
* Clean up your own mess.
* Don't take things that aren't yours.
* Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
* Wash your hands before you eat.
* Flush.
* Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
* Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
* Take a nap every afternoon.
* When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
* Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
* Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
* And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my infancy, the first objects I can remember as standing out by themselves from a confusion of things, are my mother and Peggotty. What else do I remember? Let me see.

There comes out of the cloud, our house – not new to me, but quite familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is Peggotty's kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house on a pole, in the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog- kennel in a corner, without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that look terribly tall to me, walking about, in a menacing and ferocious manner. There is one cock who gets upon a post to crow, and seems to take particular notice of me as I look at him through the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so fierce. Of the geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after me with their long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream at night: as a man environed by wild beasts might dream of lions.

Do I remember why I came here?

Of course, I do.

I wanted to see what new texts had been added.

I wanted to read some of the older ones, too.

The simplest words can lead to the oddest links.

I didn't really expect to write anything this morning. That is, until I read your question.

But will anyone reading this reply remember (if they ever even read it) what your question was, or when you asked it, or who you are?

I think, there is something strange about it.
Sometimes there are some things I am told, I cannot remember after all, even though I was close at hand. On the other hand, there are things that are so unimportant, which I remember over and over again. Or, which is worse, things that I never want to be reminded about again. I wonder if there is some logic behind it.

Remember the victims of the tsunami.
There will be time to mourn.

Remember the survivors of the tsunami.
They need our help now.

People will always remember the negative things you did more than the positive ones. Can anybody tell me why?

As green in my memory as a bush of rosemary. But I'm not going to tell you who it is that I remember.

»Remembering« and »living in the past« are two different things. One is learning from mistakes and the other is dwelling on them.