So I’m watching one of the Roku channels late last night and “Jacob’s Ladder” pops on. Now, I have been meaning to watch this since I read about it in Newsweek back in my senior year of high school. I notice how the cinematography is pretty damn good considering when it was made, so I Wiki about the movie.
Small problem-I graduated in 1976, and this movie was made in 1990, ten years after I left the U.S.A.F. I distinctly remember reading the article about the movie, and the plotline and the actors involved pretty much matched what I remembered from this article.
This isn’t the first time I have misfiled a memory timewise, but it is the most distinctive to date.
Ever have this happen to you?
One of my childhood memories involves an earthquake. Now, we don’t get any really big earthquakes in Cleveland, nothing that does any significant property damage, but we do occasionally get one that’s big enough to notice.
A distinctive part of my memory involves my sister being at the same school as me. Well, that only happened for one year. And checking the historical record, none of those big-enough-to-notice earthquakes in Cleveland happened in that year.
Since my big head injury many of my early memory files got jumbled.
I just stumbled through til someone in my family informs of my error.
Not noticed any historical events that are misfiled. I’ll pay better attention now.
(God, another goofy thing I gotta think about)
Once in a while I’ll be trying to place certain events within my timeline of memories and something won’t jibe. “I lived in _____ then, and X didn’t happen till after I moved to _____, and yet …”
I moved around a lot in the military. Sometimes it is difficult to place timelines correctly there too, most military bases are at least superficially similar and it starts to jumble together.
Another weird one (for me) my dad basically inherited a large wooden Magnavox AM/FM record changer when his sister died about 1980. It is this huge piece of furniture. I can’t remember where they kept it. There were 3 teens at home filling up 2 bedrooms. It’s just strange.
I think I can blame many of my memory glitches on the aneurysm I had a few years back. I have lost much of my high school memories, and for quite a few years after the operation I would have people walk up as if they were old friends and…absolutely nothing.
Well, I have no good reason for my misfiled memories… in fact, I’m so excited when I remember something correctly!
` ``
My dad didn’t understand my wanting to go into graphic design, but he knew a guy who managed an ad agency, so he asked them to let me “shadow” them for aa afternoon.
So I have a clear memory of visiting this funky ad agency where they were playing cassettes on a boom box while they worked. I couldn’t believe they could dance around to “I Know What Boys Like” at a serious business.
Recently, I looked up that song, and it came out four years after my visit. Oh, and at a friend’s funeral, I took his sister aside and thanked her for giving me advice during my visit. She… had never worked in advertising.
dee doo dee doo, dee doo dee doo…
This week I joined one of those Facebook groups looking back on your hometown, and I learned that the movie theater where my wife and I saw a cool new film called Manhunter opened in 1988. The thing is, that movie came out in 1986, and I distinctly remember talking about the movie as we walked out of that theater, so what the fuck.
I mean, Facebook could be wrong, but that never happens.
I moved constantly until I was ten. And my Mom was married four times by that point plus at least three other boyfriends. Yeah, I get things confused a lot. I tend to conflate a lot of traumatic events. In fact, I did an evidence-based therapy once (prolonged exposure) where part of the treatment process was consolidating a big chunk of my memories of recurring events into one giant mega-memory that was meant to be extremely upsetting. The idea was that rather than going through them one by one, the effect of treating the mega-memory would generalize to all of them.
It worked extremely well, for certain types of memories, most notably the ones where I felt at risk of death or grievous bodily harm. My general hyper vigilance permanently disappeared. But now my recollection of those events is even more mush than it used to be. I can point to single events but I’m probably wrong about the order in which they happened, what age I was, etc. I believe in the core validity of my memories but acknowledge the details have been affected by decades of repeatedly remembering them in the context of a certain narrative.
(As such, I am fascinated by how memory works.)
Back in my college days there was one year I lived with a set of twins, one of whom had a fiancee. Twin and fiancee got married after graduation and left town, but we remained friends for a few years (they moved to the city I grew up in, and I would get together with them when I went home to visit family). Anyway, I have memories of her teasing me about my infatuation with the Mazda Miata, which had recently come out.
However, when I look at the Wikipedia page for the Mazda Miata, it was introduced in the US in 1989, which would be two or three years after I lost contact with ex-roommate and his wife. So I’m either misremembering her teasing me about my Miata lust, or I was still in contact with them for a few years longer than I remember.
I have memories involving my brother and sister, both younger than me. I’m often surprised that they do not remember these things. One in particular. my brother pointed out that he was an infant when it occurred.
I remember(ed) my Mother coming home with my baby brother. I am only 18 mos. older.
At least, I remember remembering it. He asked me once what he looked like. I have absolutely no memory of his face or any noises he made. I only remember a green blanket.
And my Mother fussing over him.
I begin to see his face by the time he was 3 and myself nearing 5.
I can’t decide if I ever remembered how he looked in the blanket or if I was too young. Or if it’s a lost memory.
My head hurts.
I have occasionally conflated movie scenes with real events.
In school, I was a wallflower.
At class reunions, I don’t expect people to remember me.
But when they remember me, and I don’t remember them, that’s a bit nerve-wracking.
I spent years convinced I had watched Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, starring Powers Boothe, with my father when it aired for the first time. Problem there is that my father died in late March 1980, several weeks before the TV-movie in question first aired.
I’ve since figured out that what we probably saw was Guyana: Crime of the Century, which was a modified version of the same story (character names changed, etc.), which aired for the first time in the US in January 1980. We also did watch a good deal of news coverage of the Jonestown disaster. Easy enough to get two movies about the same real-life event mixed up, especially for a 10-year-old at the time, who was having a spectacularly difficult year.
Along the same lines: I spent years convinced that I had watched The Matthew Shepard Story at a school assembly in 2001. (I even had a clear memory of a teacher saying afterwards “…and I realize this is The Matthew Shepard Story, not The Laramie Project.”) Only problem: The Matthew Shepard Story wasn’t released until 2002. I finally figured out years later that what we had actually watched was Anatomy of a Hate Crime.