My daughters often ask for stories about me when I was young, and I often disappoint them. There are a few classics that they never seem to tire of, consisting mostly of the handful of misbehaviors in my otherwise dull, law-abiding life (like the time my protest over the new door color of my childhood home ended in a paint spill all over the driveway, for instance, or the time I helped friends smuggle a drum of ice cream out of our college cafeteria.)

The surprising thing is that, as a writer who traffics in stories, I seem to have a terrible memory for stories of my own. Or perhaps that’s one reason why I write: Any stories that I don’t set down on paper quickly enough are at risk of vanishing into the swirling mists of to-do lists and calendar details in my brain. Just the other day, my eldest daughter told a story about our family.

“That didn’t happen,” I said.

“Yes, it did,” she insisted. “I read it in one of your columns.”

So, there you go.

Click here to continue reading this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column (which just won first place in the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest for “Best Blog on a Newspaper Website!”)