Most of us have pleasant memories from our childhood. Do you have some that come to mind more often than others? I know I do.

When I was a child I had two cousins, a boy and a girl, who were about seven years younger than I was. They gave me many minutes, hours and days of laughter.

We all stayed with my grandmother and they were the only small children I had ever been around.

We played the parts of all the programs we watched on television, Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Annie Oakley and Superman. We had plenty of places to play. My uncle had empty shelters from a time when he raised dogs and a small building that he had used to raise Lovebirds.

We had worked hard to clean everything and put our few meager possessions in them.

We had clothes and shoes that our aunts had handed down for us to play dress up. Grandma had given us some old household things to put in our little house. We made tables and chairs from old barrels and covered them with the old sheets or dresses.

Under the shelters we put our horses and guns. We had gotten sticks from a nearby lumber mill and made horses using old rags for saddles and found small pieces of wood with knotholes that made pretty acceptable guns.

One day when we had gotten a little tired we were resting in our tree swings. Jimmy found one of the pieces of old sheets and climbed up on grandmother’s woodshed, which wasn’t too high. From there he climbed to the next building which was a little higher and from there he jumped on the roof of the porch. He called Joy and me to come see what he was doing.

&uot;Watch me,&uot; he said. &uot;I am going to jump off and fly like Superman.&uot;

&uot;Tum on, I tatch you,&uot; said Joy.

Well he got back to the furthest part of the porch, ran as hard as he could and took a flying leap off the porch. He hit Joy dead on, standing with her arms wide open and, SPLAT, they both went to the ground.

I thought I had never seen anything so funny in my entire life. When grandma got to the back door, Joy and Jimmy were on the ground crying and I was doubled over out of breath from laughing.

I got in big trouble! Grandma thought because I was the oldest I should have stopped Jimmy from jumping. Even looking back now, I know that I shouldn’t have. Never during my years on this earth have I remembered this incident without the same results. Joy and her mother laugh almost as hard as I do. It is one of our fondest memories of Jimmy. He was killed quite a number of years ago on the mission field.

It is also one of the memories we share about our grandmother. She had a big part in raising all of us. She was a very strict woman and set high standards for us. She also taught us what was right and wrong and made sure we attended church.

The first memory I have when I think of her is seeing her sitting in her chair reading her Bible or on her knees in front of the chair praying. When I stayed with her, it was the last thing I saw at night and the first thing I saw when I woke in the morning.

Memory can be a wonderful thing. Isn’t it the best of times when you sit with those people who are a part of those memories and remember together?