For years, I could have sworn that, when I was around ten, I was brushing my teeth and when I pulled the toothbrush out of my moouth there was a single maggot wriggling around on the bristles. I mentioned it to my mother last year and she’d never heard it before. I’m assuming it’s something she would have remembered, so it was probably just a remembered dream.
In a game called Mario Paint for Super Nintendo, there’s a music making program. It comes with 3 demo songs that you can play and mess around with. For some reason, I was convinced that I had composed one of the demo songs myself. I remember playing it for my friend and he was like “No way, you didn’t make that, it comes with the game” and I swore that I made it myself. I know it’s obvious that I didn’t make it myself, but I still can’t completely convince myself that I didn’t. It’s weird.
I have two I can think of, both from childhood.
My Dad had bought me this book of paper spaceship designs - you cut out the pieces, folded them, stuck them together, etc., and made neat little paper starships “that can really fly!”. I could have sworn that my Dad had told me that the spaceships were based on some TV program, and when I asked him about it later to find out when it was on he had no idea what I was talking about.
Another time, I was eating some Campbells won-ton soup, and I asked my Dad what won-ton meant in Chinese. He told me it meant ‘tiny rodent’, and I knew he was joking, that was the kind of joke he would make. Well, some time later (probably years) I mentioned this to him and he said he had never said that to me.
BTW, my Dad was always very honest and respectful to me, probably more so than I deserved, because of the way his mother treated him when he was growing up. This was long before he started losing his mind, otherwise I would consider the possibility that maybe he just forgot the won-ton thing (I know the paper spaceship TV show has to be a figment of my imagination).
I distinctly remember being at home on the day of the Challenger explosion, when I was in the fourth grade; school was closed because it was a teacher workday. Years later, when we were discussing the event in one of my high school classes, several kids who had been in the same fourth-grade class were equally adamant that we had all been in school. To this day, I don’t know which of us was right.
So much for people never forgetting where they were when they heard about major disasters; I expect our memories of these events are always more malleable than we think.
On the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, you sit in a big armchair that moves through the ride while a narrator talks to you through a speaker behind your head. I rode this with my mom–it was probably the first or second time I went to Disney World, so I would have been no younger than 7–and I am absolutely sure that after the voice said something about being scared, I turned to my mom, smiling and said “I’m not scared!” To that, the voice, which is of course prerecorded, responded, “Oh, but you will be.”
I remember being surprised but taking it in stride, and I also remember thinking at the time that my mom wouldn’t remember it years later, but I would. I haven’t mentioned it to her because I’m embarrassed to admit that I think such a silly thing might have actually happened. I remember it so, so clearly, though, and in addition, I remember remembering it; I’ve probably thought about it at least two or three times a month since then, and it’s been over ten years.
Now this is bothering me again.
This happens to me all the time. I usually find out later that it was all just a dream. I get really discouraged because I <i>swear</i> that I’m right but when I ask someone about it, they have no idea what I’m talking about. :-/
When I was about four, my dad got transferred to Minneapolis from Alexandria for a six-month contract. We moved into a condo in Minnetonka. I could swear this place was a white tower, 20 stories high, and we lived on the top floor. There was a big half-circle window looking over the city, and a parking garage, where we hid once when there was a tornado coming.
My dad and I drove by the complex in 1997. He confirmed that it was a three-story, red brick condo complex… but we did live on the third floor. The view must have seemed quite nice from there at the age of four. Maybe I went by whatever office tower Dad was working in and got them confused.
I remember Christmas one year at my grandma’s house (where we always had Christmas). I got up in the middle of the night and walked to the foyer where I could look into the living room. I clearly remember Santa Claus filling my stocking.
One phenomenon I’ve noted is that I’ll cross up multiple similar events and confuse them with each other. Similar in a way to how I’ll be playing back some piece of music in my head that I haven’t heard in a while only to have it morph into a different but similar song or composition. Like the tune of the theme music to the tv show Quincy ME getting mixed up in my head with the tune of the theme music to the tv show CHiPS (you can see how long it’s been since I watched tv), or starting to hum “Precious and Few” and ending up a couple bars later in the midst of “Cherish” instead.
As with music, so it is with memories of events. When I was in junior high / high school, we lived close to the canyon of the Rio Grande. Down in the canyon valley was a little clearwater stream we used to skinny-dip in, and meanwhile midway up the side of the canyon walls there was a cave we used to climb down into, not a limestone stalactite-and-stalagmite cave but a basalt cave, a maze of holes and openings that eventually opened up into a large ampitheatre sort of room. I have memories that don’t make sense because parts of them involve following along behind Kelli in her damp underwear and it seems like during the same event she was holding a candle and it kept going out and we were stoned and had a hard time relighting it. Well, we never did both places in a single event, so some of what I remember has to have been crossed up with and half-grafted onto the events of a different day when we were at the other location. And when my mind flicks to the memory I get this snapshot image of Kelli in her underwear holding a candle in the cave where we’ve gone to go skinny dipping. Yeah right.
I clearly remember seeing an episode of The Simpsons once, years before I took an interest in the show. I remember where I lived at the time and what episode it was. Trouble is, I moved out of that place in 1989 before the series even premiered!
(Only one episode aired in 1989 and that’s not the one.)
No one has mentioned the one that has affected many people:
That’d be the but Bob.
Ummmm…
That really happened.
I distinctly remember sitting on my bed when I was about four talking to a tiny man on my pillow. He had an odd, bulbous face and he wore a tiny business suit.
Also, when I was about four or five, I remember being in bed on Christmas eve, trying to fall asleep. Suddenly, the door opened, and a floating, ghost-like Santa head came over to my bed. I pulled the blankets up over my head and waited a few minutes. When I came out, the Santa head was gone.
I distinctly remember these events like they happened recently.
Ilsa_Lund, That’d be the butt, Bob was never uttered on the Newlywed Game. At least, not so much as the urban legend states it. The exact quote, “Is it in the ass” was uttered by a white woman, not a black man as the UL would have it. The link has a video link at the bottom, pretty funny.
This happens to my sister all the time. One thing she often insists she saw was a print ad for some sort of feminine product where the narrative was a woman saying “I knew I had to crouch”. For Christ’s sweet sake, what does that even mean? But she is insistant that she saw that ad.
slipster, when mom used to bathe me, I used to say to her “When I get big and you get little, will I have to give you a bath?” She’d laugh, but it turned out to come true.
I will dream things before they happen. Like WAY before. Months or years even. My sisters just tell me I have my memory rewind and fast-forward mixed up, but I dont believe that malarky. I remember a lot of my dreams, I even write some of them down. And then its like true deja vu when they happen for real.