How far back do your memories go -- and how accurate do you think they are?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Me, I was about 1 year old. Maybe a little younger. I was born in the Philippines and my grandfather was a Russian. I have faint memories of him carrying me, cradling me in his arms and tickling my belly with the stubble of his chin. I asked my parents about it (much later, of course), and they said he used to do that and nobody else ever did that. So I’m pretty sure it was him and I’m pretty sure it’s a memory of him that I hold. And treasure.

We moved to the USA when I was 3 and I never did see him. He died in the Philippines when I was 8.

42

As a child we moved only once, when I was 5 yrs old, from an old sawmill company town to the house that I grew up in, and currently own and live in again now. I have many memories of the old mill town even though that town hasn’t existed for 50 years. So memories of being 3 to 5 there.

Started first grade at 5, there was no kindergarten at that time. I remember all of those school years and summers.

43

I have plenty of memories from 4 on and a few from 3. Some of the ones from 4 were on tv; the moon landing and later the splashdown. For some reason the memory of the splashdown in stronger. I also remember Nixon’s inauguration, with my Mom explaining to me what was going on. The Christmas I was 3 I got this really cool zoo truck with animals. I think I stopped using the cages pretty early on. I remember a cement floor being put down in the chicken house (we had 5000 chickens). I was 3 when my aunt and uncle gave us a beagle they couldn’t keep in their apartment.

44

As far as accuracy of my memories living in that old mill town I think they are resonably good. It is not like I could go back there and reminisce, there is not a single board left, the whole town was taken out and is a gated off swamp. I can’t even get back in to look at the swamp.

I remember the rows of houses, ours had a weeping willow, the company store, the wooden sidewalks and tadpoles growing under them, my good friend across the street, the lift trucks running right down the middle of the street carrying lumber, I could go on all day.

Very few family pictures from that time period about 1960.

45

My first memory was when my brother, who is 18 months younger than me, was in his crib and I got up early one morning and climbed in with him. That would be early 1954. I remember getting up early and watching TV just as it was coming on, including “The Modern Farmer” and Farmer Grey, a silent cartoon. I also remember my mother bringing me to the old library and to Queens College to be tested for speech. That was before I went to kindergarten.

Memories are weird. When she was quite young, my daughter loved a program called KIds Songs, which involved a bunch of little kids taking over an abandoned TV station and broadcasting kid music videos. She was fascinated more by the production than by the songs. I looked it up and found there is a later version which doesn’t involve little kids working with high voltage circuits.
And I found my daughter does not remember watching that show at all.

46

For sure I remember things from age 4. I do have a couple of specific memories from age 3.

47

I remember every one of my teachers from kindergarten on. I estimate that I remember more than 50% of my grade school classmates, a handful of whom I am still in contact with.

mmm

48

Most of my early childhood memories are trauma-related. One of my earliest is talking to a judge in a courtroom. I must have been three or maybe just four. He asked me a question about whether something happened before or after my birthday and the question just stymied me. I also kinda had the microphone in my mouth. Hopefully it was well-sanitized afterward.

At the time this happened, I had no idea about the importance of it. But I remember having recurring nightmares not long after that, that someone was trying to break into our house. In the dream there was a sliding glass door with the intruder on the other side and I was an infant helpless to stop him. My fear of home invasion persists to this day.

I don’t 100% trust my memories because some stuff that happened much later in my childhood does not conform with the facts of the timeline. I believe the memory is accurate but not when it happened. Some things I thought happened when I was 12, for example, must have happened when I was 16. That whole span of time between age 10 and 17 is so mixed up because so much happened.

Some of my memories, though, have been corroborated verbatim.

I trust them for the gist of what happened in my life, the broad strokes. I’m not going to swear by individual details. Memory is famously unreliable and the more times you tell the story in your head, the more you remember some details as more salient than others, and the more those salient details shape the whole narrative.

I think about this a lot because sometimes I remember positive things about my childhood that seem like they can’t possibly fit with the worst parts of it. My Mom was in some ways an ultra-responsible parent and when you see the magnitude of her lapses, it just doesn’t make sense. But I don’t know that this is an issue with memory so much as the reality of abuse for a lot of kids. I had an old therapist who used to call it “crazy-making.” Living two realities at once.

I also have vivid memories of saying or doing something embarrassing, at six or seven years old, and I still feel shame about it. I have a hard time forgiving even the things I did as a child. I don’t even mean truly humiliating things, but like, I remember being too bossy with a theater troupe and one of the girls made a comment under her breath and I realized what an arrogant asshole I was and I was seven.

This stuff happened, in the case of my earliest memories, 40 years ago. At this point I’m remembering about remembering about remembering. Memory is slippery.

49

Also, now that I’m a parent, it freaks me out that my kid is starting to form permanent memories. I feel a lot of responsibility to make them good ones.

50

This seems like a question someone with aphantasia would ask - is that the case?

I can remember the full experience - the sights, sounds; the smell of the wood at the back of the cupboard under the stairs etc. It’s possible that I am only remembering the memory of the memory of the memory etc, but I think that’s probably what memory is anyway.

In the case of some childhood memories, nobody talked about them until much much later - reminiscence isn’t something you typically do after only a short time. In particular there was a detail about being bathed in the sink that I never spoke about to anyone else until much later (I accidentally pooped in the sink and sat on it; when it floated up, I then tried to argue that it was a leaf, not a flattened piece of poop. I was too embarrassed about this to ever discuss it until I was about 40 or something, but when I mentioned it to my mum, she remembered it).

51

One of the many memories of the house I lived in before I was five was a long piece of corrugated iron sticking out of the ground. I am told it was a relic of the Anderson Shelter my family sheltered in during the Second World War.

On the other hand I do not really know whether this was a back formation from someone else’s memories, or a real memory. It seems pretty real to me.

52

I remember all of my elementary school teachers (Aamot, Wilson, Berlin, Triber, Tilson, Engen) and even my nursery school teacher (Marie Passay). Prior to that there are only brief mental clips, and they’re likely not accurate. My eldest son has an incredibly correct memory of things that happened pre-school, even down to what he was wearing when we went to a drive-in movie (purple pajamas) when he was little.

53

This manner of responding - without quoting the question you are responding to - makes it difficult to know exactly what “question” of mine you are asking about. But, no, I do not have aphantasia (if that is what you are asking.)

54

I meant no offence. It was a response to the whole post, which only contains one question. It seemed like you might be questioning the intensity or detail of memories in general; they aren’t just memories of single facts like ‘this event took place’, they are memories of entire sets of sensed experiences; it’s really unlikely that the even could be constructed from suggestions by others reminiscing out loud.

55

I can name all my teachers from Kindergarten to 7th grade. The 8th grade teacher’s face is still clear to me, and her name will come to me eventually. The first memory I can reliably date is my cousin’s birth when I was three. I don’t have any memory of the cousins who were born when I was five and six as newborns, though. I know the previous memories are accurate. I can look up these teachers online, and they exist. But I also know that the memory I have of literally floating around at three or four, feet off the ground, is false.

Edit, I did a test and found out my fifth grade teacher just died. RIP.

56

I remember Thatcher winning her 2nd election, which would put me at 4 years old. I’m sure I have earlier memories but nothing so easily dateable.

57

That’s interesting. I’ve heard of memories like that but I have never had a memory like that. I do have somatic memories with PTSD but they are completely divorced from a sense of time and place. Which is to say, I have narrative memory of trauma and I have somatic memory of trauma and they have completely different manifestations. However even with somatic memory it isn’t sound and scent and that sort of thing. It’s a feeling, both physically and emotionally. A terrible feeling. It’s even a state of mind. Sometimes I just feel like I’m thirteen.

But most of my childhood memories aren’t vivid. I remember a few details and not much else. In the case of the courtroom scene I mentioned above, those are literally the only two things I remember from that day. In the case of the microphone, I remember someone repeatedly asking me not to hold my mouth so close to it. This was a tall order for a 3-4 year old.

I have no idea who was even asking me the questions or what kind of hearing it was, based on the facts later related to me about the case. I was the victim; the perpetrator pled guilty. Maybe sentencing? It’s all lost to history.

In the fantasy thread I was talking recently about how I can’t envision fantasy environments well. I can only hold a few things in my head at a time. Maybe it also applies to my memories.

58

No offense, just - uh - laziness/inconvenience on my part? Searching reveals that I posted 3x previously in this thread. Wasn’t sure what questions I asked in which post. When you just click reply, it does not say which # post you are replying to - which might be helpful. So to continue any exchange with you, I would have to go back and read all of my posts.

I’ve done a bit of reading about memory and consciousness - tho I am FAR from expert. But I’m pretty persuaded that many/most memories are something different from an accurate and objective recording of what transpired. I also have encountered countless instances in which what someone insists is an accurate “memory” - is simply incorrect/didn’t happen. Or is an extrapolation of a photo they saw, or something they heard.

Also, with a long career as a lawyer, I am confident in my belief as to the fallibility of “eye witness testimony.”

I think our brains are quite good at making up stories and “filling in gaps” in a manner that appeals to or is useful to us somehow. And I think our memories do not necessarily become more reliable over time.

That is all I was suggesting. It is likely I who ought to apologize for referencing your post. But if we took any of your reported memories, I would bet we could come up with explanations for how the memory could have been falsified or adjusted - as opposed to being a clear “recording” of some specific occurrence.

59

When you click on the bit at the top right of the post where it says (in my case) ↷Dinsdale, it expands to show the post that it was a reply to.

I think you’re right - people’s memories can be horribly faulty. I cannot be absolutely sure I am remembering things that actually happened - there are some memories that I have that I know for sure are false (for example I have a memory of my mum running back up a sandy beach after emptying and rinsing out my potty in the sea - I would only be about a year old at the time and I think this memory is constructed from people talking about a photo of my mum standing on a sandy beach holding the potty in her hand - but this memory doesn’t have anything like the texture or dimensionality of the memories I discussed earlier - it’s just like a memory of an animated version of the photograph - I couldn’t tell you what else was in view; there is no associated smell of the beach; there is no sound or associated memory of the feel of the sand or anything).

60

The first datable memory I have was the immediate aftermath of being (accidentally!) hit in the face with a hammer by my older brother and being rushed to hospital. I was around 2 and a half.

I have a few really weird little snapshop memories from the next few years, mostly very vivid and of tiny inconsequential things, but it’s really patchy until I was around 6, at which point it gets pretty solid.

I remember Thatcher leaving power, because the kid whose Dad was in the union tried to march round the playground chanting in celebration and got stopped and really half-heartedly told off by the playground monitors. I would have been about 7 though.