Would you call it a miracle that someone who often can't remember what he had for breakfast 40 minutes earlier can remember precisely what he was doing during two key events 40 years ago?

I would. On April 4, 1968, Cookie, John, Tony and I were aimlessly roaming the streets of Rockingham in search of mischief when we heard someone say that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had just been shot and that cities all over the country were erupting into flames.

One morning two months later, I was on the outer edge of sleep in front of the television when I heard an announcer talking about an assassination.

Hmm, I thought before drifting back to the untroubled sleep of a not-so-bright 10-year-old, they must've caught the dude who killed Dr. King.

No, they had caught the man who killed Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Boy, talk about needing a scorecard to keep up.

Because of the loss of those two visionary leaders, I'd bet on 1968 as one of the most historically significant years of the 20th century.

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WHEN YOU'RE 10, just about everything seems exciting, significant and new. The passage of four decades proves, though, that it was more than just the wonderment of adolescence that makes 1968 deserving of iconic status.

Nineteen sixty-eight was the end of the 1960s, even though another year remained on the calendar. The idealism that ushered in the decade was replaced by escalating war and assassinations. Cities were ablaze -- and it wasn't even summer -- and the final strains of "We Shall Overcome" were being drowned out.

The rain that turned Dr. King's planned "Poor People's March" on Washington into a muddy mess, symbolically, at least, doused the flames of idealism. Those flames weren't as powerful as the flames white America saw on the television news each night, flames set by black anger and frustration.

Fear made millions susceptible to the pitch of presidential candidate Richard Nixon, who ran on a law-and-order platform. Little did they know that when Nixon pledged to get crime off the streets, he would transfer it to the White House.

The Watergate break-in was still four years away, though, and political chaos seemed confined to the Democratic National Convention and the streets.

That was the year Otis Redding was "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay," Simon & Garfunkel were singing their ode to "Mrs. Robinson," The Rascals were telling us "People Got to be Free" and James Brown loudly proclaimed that he was "Black and I'm Proud."

It's also the year that Dion sang "Abraham, Martin & John" about martyred leaders.

"Didn't you love the things they stood for? Didn't they try to do some good for you and me?"

A verse was added after Bobby Kennedy was gunned down in Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel. The year was so marred by violence domestically and internationally that it's conceivable that Dion's producer rushed him out of the studio before some other leader was felled -- thereby requiring yet another verse.

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IN DELIVERING THE EULOGY at his brother's funeral, Sen. Ted Kennedy quoted Robert's favorite George Bernard Shaw line: "Some people see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say 'Why not?' "

It's unlikely that even Robert Kennedy could have foreseen the distance from 1968 that this country has traveled, when a candidate who summons echoes of him in many ways -- except that he's of mixed ethnicity -- would be the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

Considering where our country is 40 years later, that chaotic year could be viewed as labor pains that birthed a new America.

As any mother will tell you, giving birth can be painful. But the offspring is something to be proud of.

Happy 40th anniversary, America.

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