Even as we move on to 2014, every news outlet in the country gives an outgoing nod to the biggest stories of 2013, in case we’ve already forgotten. Those stories are usually saturated with high drama and tragedy — in fact, they are the stories we are least likely to forget.

But what of all the other stories out there, that are just as worthy of a little remembrance? Those moments of fun, and perhaps, of humor.

Remember when those people walking into Walmart got shanghaied for jury duty? Yes, that really happened: in June, in Washington, a Superior Court judge told the bailiffs to go get him some jurors at Walmart. So that’s what they did, much to the surprise of the unsuspecting jurors.

Or that producers for an internationally aired show on HGTV, highlighting homes originally built as something else, came to Washington to film not one, but two, very unique homes built in a former fire station and a former hospital?

Or that a man killed in a single-car accident got a burial most fishermen could only dream of, his ashes now part of an artificial reef in the Pamlico River?

How about the fact that for one day, Beaufort County Superior Court was overtaken by first graders enacting the trial of the Big, Bad Wolf?

Or that Trudy Nelson, a long-time hospital volunteer who, at 92, was singled out by Gov. Pat McCrory to receive North Carolina’s highest award for volunteerism?

Or that ten teams of volunteer firefighters played a day-long tournament to raise money solely to help fallen firefighters and their families?

Or that the memory of a murdered paraplegic man will live on in a Goose Creek State Park handicapped campsite built in his honor?

Or that 29 people each recited a few lines of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of Chocowinity Town Hall in commemoration of the speech’s 50^th anniversary?

It’s not just the biggest stories of last year that matter most as we greet this, our new year. Often, it’s the little ones that should be remembered.