I’ve spent half my lifetime deliberately creating the memories that make me cringe, laugh hysterically, feel immensely proud, make me happy and make me cry. While there are some things I now wish I hadn’t done, I still wouldn’t change a thing.
I would, except that I don’t think it would do a lot of good. Most of the people I know, myself included, are carrying around things from their pasts that they’d rather not. Junior high and high school experiences are the most commonly cited culprits. I know that a lot of the quirks in my personality are the result of junior high hell, which happened 45 years ago.
But really, I don’t remember them. I remember that so-and-so was a bastard/bitch to me, but I can’t remember anything specific that was said, nor, without the benefit of an old yearbook, can I even remember what the people looked like.
So, I think that even if what little memory I have of the people were removed, there wouldn’t be any effect.
I guess I could stand to have some things I did that were stupid or cruel erased, and I could certainly do without the memory of some legal trouble my son got in a couple of years ago. Yeah, that I’d want gone.
I don’t think I would … just because I can’t remember something doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. The only exception I can think of would be one that was mentioned above where a situation (be it with snakes, dogs, water, etc) that was otherwise not very notable later caused an unreasonable phobia or hatred. To erase that phobia and not have it affect anything else would be worth it. Anything interpersonal? Nothing for me.
I would like to erase large sections of my life between mid-1991 and mid-1999, but I don’t feel comfortable explaining what or why.
There was a comic strip a few days ago. Not sure which one. Featured a Time Machine. A guy wanted to go back in time to correct a mistake that he’d made the day before. He did so, but while doing that, the person who owned the machine explained to another person that this didn’t work in the long run.
Because time had a way of healing itself. If you removed the action, you removed the results. So you lost the memory of what you learned from your mistake, and were thus doomed to repeat it.
No matter how many regrets I might have, I don’t think I’d want to erase them from my mind. Because the bitter experience is perhaps the only thing keeping me from making the same mistakes.
I wouldn’t erase any memories, not even the very bad ones. They make you what you are. If “Star Trek” has taught us nothing else, it’s that if you go back in time and remove the bad things that happened in your life, when you get back to your own time you’re incredibly lame.
There is one very, very painful memory that I’d like to remove–erase completely–but as horrible as it is (I can’t even really talk about it here), it taught me a lot. It’s not so much wanting to keep it as needing to at this point.
I’d like to erase two situations in my past (one in the summer of 1991, the other, a weekend in 1995), which I decline to discuss other than to state that both times I behaved like a stupid, immature cunt and made several lifelong enemies. I’m sorry, you guys, wherever you are, for my asinine behavior.
Oh, yeah, there was also the time I was 8 and I was lured into a bathroom and had my underwear stolen by a fourth-grade boy. I was not raped, however. Let’s erase that, while we’re at it.
I would erase the memory of my arm almost getting fed between two giant metal rollers nearly 20 years ago when I (briefly) worked in a factory. The rollers were used to bend aluminium. I was feeding the metal through when my glove got caught and started going through. I managed to yank my hand out of the glove and escaped with nothing but a fractured knuckle. By the time the guy near the switch flicked the thing off, my arm would’ve been through to the elbow. I wish I could not remember this.
My wife’s mom.
From the day she left a note on the kitchen table and moved abruptly on her daughter, to the day she accused me of stealing the Kid’s birthday card money, she’s been nothing but hell to have on this planet.
See ya Bitch, you’re gone. You never happened, except for that 20 seconds it took you to conceive and give birth to (combined) my Wife, you’ve been a totally worthless piece of flesh.