And not because you were on drugs or drunk. Just a normal place you know you went to but don’t remember any details about. I was reading the thread on riverboat casinos and thought about the time I went to one in Tunica Mississippi with my brother and sister-in-law for my first and only visit. It was about 25 years ago. I distinctly remember an unrelated conversation we had on the drive there that turned out to be very consequential for them some months later. But I have no memory of the casino. Nothing at all. I think I took $25 to play with but I don’t know if I lost it or broke even. I imagine I would remember if I won money but maybe not. You would think being in a flashy loud casino atmosphere would leave an impression on someone who had never been in one before but not me. It’s just a black hole in my memory.
Has anyone else experienced something like this? Of course, I didn’t realize I had no memory of it until I saw the casino thread, so this may be a tough question. I guess it could work if someone told you that you went somewhere but you don’t remember.
I know I visited the Denver (Colorado) Mint as a tween when I was in the Girl Scouts and we took a trip to Colorado, in the late 1970s, but I just plain old do not remember anything about it either.
All the time - I don’t remember anything from trips to the Statue of Liberty etc as a child or any of the concerts I went to in high school and college ( sometimes I’m not even sure of the performer or venue and I have to try to deduce that information)
The answer to the OP is ‘no’. I may be unusual in the fact that I can remember virtually everyplace I’ve been. My family went on several long vacations when I was a kid, and I can recall everywhere we spent the night, which sights we saw, etc.
My elder siblings are amazed at the details I can remember. For instance, when I was 10, we drove to the East Coast. Along the way, we stayed at my Aunt’s house in Morgantown, WV. While we were there, we toured a glass factory. None of my sibs remembered that, but I located the pictures that proved it.
I have extremely selective memories. I know I can’t remember the vast majority of places I have visited as a child or even as an adult. I’ve been married twice for a total of 26 years, and I can honestly remember very little about those 26 years. I have intentionally chosen to block them out.
Why I can’t remember much of my childhood, I can’t say, but for some reason, I have blocked those memories out too. Now and again, a pleasant childhood memory pops into my head, often when I am talking to my brother, who remembers everything, but soon it will be lost, like my other memories. Strange as it may seem, I have always been this way, at least as far back as I can remember.
In 1995, we spent two weeks touring Ireland with two other couples. I have vivid memories of the places we visited, but a couple of years ago, my wife and I had dinner with one of those couples. During the dinner, we were reminiscing about the trip, and they started talking about a particular place we had visited; as they described it, I discovered that I had absolutely zero memory of the place, or the things that we did there.
But, then, I thought about something I did remember: we were touring a small castle, and I had my head turned to talk to my wife when I walked through a doorway. The doorway had a low clearance, and I cracked my forehead into the lintel, which staggered me, and hurt like crazy for a few minutes. As we talked more about that incident, and the trip, I realized that I probably got a concussion from that, and roughly the previous 24 hours of memories were just gone.
When I graduated U.S. Air Force basic training, we were given a town pass to spend the day in San Antonio with our families. My mom and I went to the Alamo. I remember seeing it from the outside, but don’t remember anything about what was inside. I find it ironic that the Alamo is the thing I can’t remember after all the times I’ve heard “Remember the Alamo!”
I’ve been with my husband for nearly 33 years. This happens to me lots of times – he says “remember when we went to this place” and I have no memory of it, so he provides more context and details, and eventually I remember enough stuff so it would count as “remembering that I was there” but I have no specific memories of anything that happened there, and that’s as far as I can go.
I’ve tried to figure out why this happens, but selectively. I now believe that this happens when I went to places with my husband and his Japanese friends or family. They spend all their time talking to each other, I can’t follow the conversation, so I just zone out. I’m probably thinking about something, but nothing consequential enough to remember.
I went on a band trip to Minneapolis as a teenager; our band played in a competition. I can just barely remember that we went to a baseball game and an amusement park (with no memory of what rides they might have had), but I remember nothing about the city itself or what we would have done to kill time on the 3000 kilometer round-trip bus ride.
I was thinking more of teens or adults with the “not drugs or drunk” part but I didn’t specify so I guess anything goes. I’m pretty sure that there are lots of things that I’m not aware that I don’t remember from when I was a kid so I can’t speak to those unless something triggers the non-memory. There was a poll lately about powwows that made me remember visiting an Indian village as a kid. I remembered lots about that, though, so not relevant.
As pointed out by @Roderick_Femm’s examples, there’s a difference between remembering and recalling. I remember lots of stuff I cannot recall without someone providing some context or prompting. But once it gets prompted enough to be recallable, I can recover all sorts of details that are verifiably correct.
I’m certainly not unusual in that remember / recall dichotomy. But not a lot of people seem to think about it in those terms, so I wanted to mention the idea.
My own memory has always been good about stuff I learn, but bad about stuff I experience. My three years as an undergrad were about 1000 days. My entire recallable memory of that highly salient era is a “slide show” of about 20 scenes. Some majorly significant, most mundane. Why those 20? I have no clue. The other 980 days & nights? Gone. Probably some more events are remembered and could be recalled with some prompting from somebody else who was there. But absent prompting? Gone.
There are some individual rooms of the places I’ve lived in that I don’t remember, but I don’t remember a building as a whole where I know I’ve been but don’t remember.
The closest I can come was when I was like 4 years old and took a tour of a bread factory with my day care group, and my mom says that she was slightly peeved that we got a free loaf of bread but I ate all of it on the bus ride back rather than save it to use as sandwich bread. But I don’t even remember most of the tour or the bus ride and I definitely don’t remember the loaf of bread. In retrospect I guess whether I was in the right of it depends on how good the bread was. If it was artisanal and/or very freshly baked such that it was still warm, then I’d do it all over again if I were teleported back.
But I do remember exactly one thing about the factory: the end of the corridor at the very top of the building, which was well lit from either a skylight or huge window, and facing a brick wall staircase from which we descended from the tour. I don’t even remember the stairs themselves, just the entrance to the stairwell.
I think I can remember everywhere I’ve been, at least in loose details. I find it weird how many people can remember specific meals they had, but they mean nothing to me so those get forgotten, while the locations where the meals were had are quite vivid for me.
Places are easiest for me to remember distinctively. I can remember thousands of individual places I’ve been. A distinct location and architecture helps me place events that took place there in a way I know that they’re distinct from other memories. I’m sure I have thousands of other memories about work, school, and home, but I can’t classify them all unprompted, rather than have them lurking below the surface to come back when something prompts them.
My mom finds it weird that I’ll remember meals her and I had years ago, and I remember not only what I ate but what SHE ate, when she hardly remembers the place we went to.
To the OP’s question, nothing particular comes to mind. There are a few concerts I’ve been to where I don’t particularly remember the opening act, but pretty much every time I’ve travelled or gone somewhere I wouldn’t usually go is pretty well seared in my memory.
