# How far back can memory go?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-back-can-memory-go/247277
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 27, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-back-can-memory-go/247277 "2004-05-27T01:58:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2004, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-back-can-memory-go/247277/61 "2004-05-31T00:17:18Z")
No, **Epimetheus** , hiding behind some Cecilian mantra doesn’t disguise the fact that you are simply being anal about this. I came into this discussion with a friendly “hey, here’s my experience on the matter”, and suddenly you’re here raving on about my “agenda”, my “claims”, and “checking at City Hall”. That looks like taking a bizarrely personal approach from where I’m sitting. Ferkrissakes man, I was FOUR YEARS OLD. Agenda? If I had no memories \<5 then I’d say so, but I’m not going to deny what I know to be true just to satisfy you. I’m sure you are right that my memories might not exactly match the building plans lodged with the municipality. Sheesh. Yes, if I were to go back there today, it would probably seem much smaller, as typically happens with childhood haunts. There would no doubt be a plethora of stuff I’ve gotten wrong, or have grossly built upon over the years, but the basic concept of having many, many early childhood memories is one I stand by. I have no reason to lie to you - you ain’t important enough.
If you can just relax, lay off the espresso, and listen to what I’m saying without nitpicking it to all heck, _I have thousands of memories of that house_ and of other places which are clearly deliniated by the October '74 date we left the city (btw, in a truck called “Big Red” which I was allowed to play inside briefly before it was loaded). Riding my tricycle to kindergarten, going to pick up my sister at “big school” and marvelling at the tree roots breaking the bitumen in the playground, looking at the stripe on my child’s bus ticket and wishing it was an ‘X’ like on my mum’s coz I thought that was cool, playing at the local playground which had an elephant shaped climbing frame, a giraffe shaped one, and an aeroplane shaped one, as well as the usual swings etc. It was next to a lawn bowls club. Going into the city on the train with my mother and knowing we “had to go to platform 3”, then running along the platform to be able to ride in one of the new double deck cars, coming home and getting off at our station and walking, or catching an express and getting off at another station then getting a taxi. I remember wondering how the taxi radio worked as there was no cable being paid out along the road. My dad not owning a car and borrowing an orange one from a friend called “Aunty Dot”, then hiring a silver car, getting it stuck in a carpark because it was so big, and then showing me how he could “drive” down the hill with the engine off. Going to my aunty’s house and meeting my cousins whom I thought strange because they ate their breakfast cereal dry. My dad’s yacht photos on the wall. Standing on top of a 1950s wooden “radiogram” to play with a yo-yo, because the string was too long for me to stand on the floor and do it.
How much more do you need? I can keep going all day. Remember I have a clear cut-off date for these things. After this date, we lived eighty miles away. Or are you going to come out and nitpick that I don’t remember what colour the yo-yo was, or simply straight out say that I am lying (for some obscure reason)?
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### Author:  [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2004, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-back-can-memory-go/247277/62 "2004-05-31T00:30:39Z")
Wow, paranoid much?
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### Author:  [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2004, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-back-can-memory-go/247277/63 "2004-05-31T00:36:31Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#):
>
> Oh, just for the record, I have already stated that it isn’t impossible to have memories that have truth to them. It don’t even think it is impossible that an old memory is fully accurate. Now, sorting the memory that is accurate out of the thousands of inaccurate, and hundreds of made up memories is the trick. With high odds, it is safer to take all memories with a grain of salt.
Somebody needs to lay off the expresso, but I don’t think it is myself. I am not nitpicking you all to heck, nor was I insinuating any of the dark things you seem to think I was. I was giving examples.
Again, this is not only the internet, but SDMB, and General Questions specifically. Now, if you don’t like your stuff scrutinized and analized, don’t post on the internet, if you don’t like Cecils or this message boards goal, then don’t post here, if you can handle all of that, but don’t like people questioning you, go hid in MPSIMS. This is GQ, here is the place for facts, not anectdotes. Answers, not perspectives.
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### Author:  [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2004, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-back-can-memory-go/247277/64 "2004-05-31T00:53:02Z")
Thanks Dad. But kindly do not lecture me on how this board works.
If you want clinical answers, then go to an encyclopedia site. You’ll get those here too when somebody asks about, I dunno, a mathematical formula or somesuch. However, here we are talking about a subjective topic, and as is often the case even here in GQ, you get answers but you also get personalised perspectives and experience. _That_ is why we come to the SDMB. That is its beauty. That’s what makes us Dopers. Otherwise, we’d simply Google everything like the masses do.
You are a moron.
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### Author:  [@mamakat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mamakat)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2004, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-back-can-memory-go/247277/65 "2004-05-31T07:42:34Z")
I remember the day my sister was adopted. The same social worker that brought me brought her and she brought me a pair of green pajamas with triangle buttons. I was one. I also remember the day my baby brother came home from the hospital. I was 1 and a half.
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### Author:  [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2004, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-back-can-memory-go/247277/66 "2004-05-31T10:07:34Z")
**TheLoadedDog** and **Epimetheus** , would the two of you please knock it off.
Since the OP is a bit subjective, you are permitted to state your opinions and/or experiences on the subject. However, this being GQ, you are not permitted to take jabs at each other.
Please restrain yourselves or take it to another forum. Thank you.
- **xash**
General Questions Moderator
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