Memories Never Remembered

This evening found my wife and I leaving a Dairy Queen with Blizzards ™ in hand when I witnessed a curious event. Two young kids (grade school aged) were chattering, laughing, and plotting some harmless imaginary diversion which gave them pleasure. This is not so curious but that I remembered I had times such as those, yet I could not recall any particular one, even though I recall thinking each time that it was something important to me. This made me also think on how often we assign importance to something that we easily forget about years later, only to believe it must not have been important at all.

It strikes me that there are a good many things that transpire in our lives that have some meaning, some importance, some special quality to endear itself to us for the moment, and yet we will forget them. There are myriads of events that have shaped us in small ways, yet we cannot easily recall them, if at all. Are the details of the events all that important or is it the fact that we had enjoyable times in our childhood? Are the things we cannot remember factors that have influenced our present outlook on life? We can recall those "grand" moments where we were faced with some great trial that did alter the pattern of our life. How much do the day-to-day events of our lives shape our future selves?

It was fun to watch children play as I used to and recall that I once did that. I wonder what other unremembered memories I have?