Are You Here?

Ihave often wondered why certain childhood memories, especially trivial ones, stay with me longer than others. Years later they have a way of coming back, sometimes with a profound lesson.

It was seventh grade, and our rebbi was Rav Lipa Solomon a”h, who learned under the Chofetz Chaim and was a very accomplished talmid chacham in his own right — although that was lost on us at the time. He was close with my family; he and my father a”h were friends back in the glory days of the European yeshivos. But he was also a no-nonsense melamed in the classroom.

One boy in our class was constantly forgetting to do his homework or review his Gemara inside. One day, as Mr. Forgetful drew Rebbi’s attention yet again, we were treated to the following story:

There was a boy who was always forgetting where he put his things. His rebbi advised him to make a list before he went to sleep, keeping a cheshbon of where everything was. He meticulously wrote, “My shirt is on the dresser, my pants are in the closet, and I am in bed!”