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Every now and then, my brain goes traveling down Memory Lane for no specific reason. And it comes back with a totally random very specific piece of my past.

Usually something that has to do with my childhood.

Chéri is very familiar with these Family Flashes, because I always feel the need to share them with him, when they happen.

I thought I’d start a little series, like a scrapbook of these tiny bits of my life.

***

This one comes to mind every now and then, and every time, it makes me smile.

Back then, I was 6 years old so Little Bro was about 3.

We lived in Fermont, a small town North of the province, close to Labrador. Still to this day, the whole city exists solely for the means of the iron mine close by. And like all tiny places, pretty much everybody knows everybody on some level.

So you try to stay away from any faux-pas, if you don’t want the whole place to know about it.

So, that day, Mom had to take care of some banking business, and she had brought Little Bro and I along. I’m guessing there wasn’t a long queue (how could there be one?) and when we got to walk to the bank clerk, Mom sat Little Bro on the counter.

She and the clerk engaged in banking small talk, and soon after, Little Bro (probably bored out of his mind, for obvious reasons, when you’re a toddler sitting on a bank counter) pulled the spotlight on him in the most brilliant way (I bet Mom would have disagreed back then, and she probably wished he hadn’t mastered basic French at the time).

Mom… Can you scratch my butt please? It really itches!

That alone would have been enough to make Mom want to disappear then and there. But he wasn’t done, just yet.

Is it tonight that we get to take a bath?

Needless to say that we took baths every evening, and though I’ll give Little Bro the benefit of a doubt… I suspect that his butt wasn’t itching as much as he just wanted attention.

And he sure got what he wanted.

The proof being that I still recall that moment clearly, today. I have absolutely no recollection of how Mom got out of that awkward situation. But it was all worth it, because it makes me smile, remembering it.

And as we grow older, good memories are like little gems, right?