Do you remember the first time?

How many times have you heard that? Or, to put it a different way, how many times have you asked that question?

A pessimist might describe his life as being a struggle from problem to problem, whereas an optimist’s journey would be a wander from experience to experience, punctuated by memories.

So, here’s a question. Can you remember your first memory?

Obviously, you won’t remember your first breath, or for that matter, your last. But we all have a memory starting point.

For example I can definitely recall my first days at school when I was four.

I can remember falling out of my pushchair on the Old Castletown Road, when my Aunt Elsie, who was taking her young nephew (me) for a walk. She did an emergency stop and I shot out of the front facing seat. I was unhurt.

And I can remember my pedal trike. It was a posh, chain driven model with blow up tyres.

I clearly remember riding up and down the pavement outside our house in Pully. I know that I had the trike before I started school, so it’s safe to say that I can start my memory clock at age three.

And that was that. I had started to fill a brand new brain with a life story.

I can remember the names of the teachers at the Sunshine School, Miss Pickett who became Mrs Cannell, and Miss Faragher, who changed her name to Mrs Quiggin.

We only have one chance to start with an empty memory, so don’t waste it.

It’s like waking up on a winter’s morning after a heavy snowfall. You can’t wait to get outside but you know that when you do, perfection will be spoiled.

When you think about it, the human brain is amazing. No matter how much you put into it, it never gets full.

You can remember things that you didn’t think you knew.

I once read that, in an average lifetime, we only use a fraction of our brain’s capacity.

Just imagine how much knowledge was stored inside the head of Albert Einstein.

Now, we never met, but from his photographs, I would have thought that his head was about the same size as mine.

That is where any similarity between me and Albert ends.

But why are we all so different in the brain department?

I started life in the Sunshine school when I was four, along with about three dozen or so others.

We were lined up in the school hall and followed the leader into classroom one.

We learned how to read and write, we learned our ’times tables’, and we learned the basics of how to relate to each other.

Then after three or four years, we left the cosy and secure world of mixed infants for the cut and thrust of Demesne Road Boy’s.

But it was Ballakermeen, long trousers and the cane that introduced an eleven year old to reality.

On the one hand we were all in the same boat with blazers, caps and school ties, and on the other hand we were all split up into separate groups according to our scholastic abilities.

The result was that I was to waste the next five years trying to learn French and Latin, and how to keep just one step ahead of authority, when all that I really wanted to do was to spend my time with the interesting teachers learning about gardening, woodwork and metalwork.

So why was I placed in what was known as the ’top class’? I’ll tell you. It was just because I had a good memory.

But is it as simple as that? What is memory? How do you define memory?

I had one of those crystal clear moments the other day when I knew the answer.

It is like when you suddenly realise the meaning of life, or what caused the creation of the solar system.

And then you forget!