I REALIZED WITH DEEP REGRET, last Monday, that I had come to the end of the memories my father had recorded so far.

I immediately called him, and put in a request for more, but he's recently moved and said it will take him some time to locate the notes he had made.

I'd already contacted my father-in-law, and asked that he contribute as well, but in the meantime I was left without memories to post.

So, it occurred to me to write my own memories—after all, I'm only a couple of decades younger than my father, and so have almost as good a claim to have witnessed ancient history as he.

I was born, like my father, in a small town in Iowa. I don't remember much about that town, since we moved from it before I was of an age to notice much, but I do have one memory, a sort of pseudo-memory, of an event that occurred there.

At the beginning of his history, my father wrote, "The recollections recorded in this document are just that, memories as best I can recall." I defend the following account (and all others) in the same way.

This is the way I remember the story; I make no claims to infallibility. I have no memory of my own, in this first case, so I am only recounting the story as I remember hearing it, at a young and fallible age, told to me.

My father was a teacher at the time, and teachers didn't make a lot of money. I picture us living in a converted store-front, though I have no idea where that picture comes from.

Our source of heat was a small, free-standing, oil burning stove.

I was a toddler at the time, and one day I managed to move more quickly than my parents thought, or to take advantage of some distraction.

At any rate, I managed to get near the stove, and I lost my balance.

I fell toward the stove, and stopped myself by putting my right hand against it.

I stayed there, supporting my weight on that single hand against a hot stove, until my parents could reach me.

By that time, the hand was badly burned, and it was apparently a long time healing, bandaged so completely that it was useless to me.

I've wondered how that event, which I have no personal memory of, changed my life.

It's possible, of course, that the trauma had an effect on me, but I tend to doubt it. Children are extremely resilient when it comes to accidents.

But my mother once told me I was right-handed before that accident.

Since then, my whole life, I've been ambidextrous: able to use both hands almost equally, favoring one or the other for different tasks. I've always assumed this was the result of having to use my left hand exclusively during the healing process.

A change in handedness, of course, carries with it a change in which brain hemisphere is controlling the action. That, in turn, changes the way the brain develops.

Who knows what subtle differences in my ways of thinking, of processing, of reacting, might have been brought about when I became fated to ambidexterity, in a single traumatic moment.

I certainly don't.