So, I was in the kitchen this weekend with my parents, and the topic of black vs green olives came up, and they disagreed about which they prefered. I said I didn’t have an opinion because I’d never eaten one.
My dad stared at me for a moment before saying, “You’re not joking, are you? I thought you were kidding just now when you said you’ve never had an olive before.”
Me:
“You used to love olives!”
I asked if he was thinking of Vynce, who ate olives when he was small, but both he and my mother insisted that I loved olives as a toddler too. “My mom used to buy them for you, and hide them behind her back to get a reaction out of you when she showed you the jar” my mother told me, which would definitely have been me given Grammy died when Vynce was an infant.
So…I have no memory of ever having eaten something my parents claim was once one of my favorite foods. It’s such a small thing, but I’m really surprised anyway.
How about you? What mundane thing didn’t you know about yourself (in any way, not just the you don’t remember sort of thing) until someone told you about it?
Welcome to my world. I have a severe problem with erased parts of my past. I say erased because as your example states, you have NO recollection of it. About once a month I get fed some info about things I did, places I’ve been to, trips, people I kew, etc. which I absolutely have no registry of in my head. Some examples:
Two weeks ago a friend of mine found a picture of when we were teenagers, and I was holding a suitcase in my hand. I asked “wtf is that?” and he calmly explained that EVERY WEEKEND I would pack that suitcase for when we would go to the beach. It was the only one I used. It was me in the picture. I am holding the suitcase. I have no recollection of it.
I dont remember having met one of my best friends (this was ten years ago, I am 33).
I have apparently gone to parties, hung out with people, etc. that I simply cannot even imagine being possible (no, I wasn’t drunk stoned or anything). Again, not even as a child - I am talking about as a young adult.
I’ve read letters that I have written that I don’t remember writing 15 years ago.
Most of my childhood and adolescence is missing.
All in all, I have discovered that about over half of my life is missing in my registry (especially from when I was a kid and a teenager). Oddly, some things I remember vividly. Some other things, I have an idea, but I end up fabricating a memory around the idea. It is all very weird and it used to really freak me out. Now when I am told something about my past which I have no idea of, I am kind of used to it. Some things however, depending on the nature of the memory I am missing, do freak me out a little still.
For a couple years I tried to piece together a whole bunch of holes in my past, to try and nudge my memory, but nothing worked. I read a little and a theory of mine is that I suffered disassociative memory loss or something like that.
I’ll grant you, it is a freaky experience for people to tell you things you have done that you have no recollection or even a slight feeling about. Definitely a mind blower.
In the same vein as the OP, MammaHomie swears on a stack of Bibles that I used to love Cool-whip, to the point that I’d eat it straight out of the tub.
I don’t dislike the stuff now, but I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to score it.
When I was a tiny child, I was taken to Rockefeller Center at christmas time to watch the lighting of the giant tree. I watched with huge, solemn eyes. When asked what I thought of it, I replied “I’m gonna remember this for the REST of my life.”
I didn’t find out until adulthood that I had been circumcised. The dictionary definition for circumcision is something like, “The extraneous flesh at the end of the penis.” Well so, given that I wasn’t Jewish, I had no reason to believe I was circumcised, so looking at my guy all I could guess for extraneous flesh was the ring of the mushroom head. Boy was I glad I still had that!
But so eventually I figured it all out.
And some time into teenhood I was able to catch a glimpse of my face from the side. “Fuck! I have no chin!” That’s still rather annoying since I look pretty decent head on.
I, too, have entire years missing, or so it seems. My husband will share his memories of a trip taken and I’ll look vague and say when did you do that? And he’ll look at me funny and say we ALL went–it was a family trip. As for memories of our kids when they were little, you’d think they had parallel experiences in 2 different households. I just don’t recall the stuff he does.
But I do have some vivid memories of their childhood and fond memories (of course) as well.
Last summer, I came across some old college papers of mine as we were cleaning out the attic. Not only did I not recall writing this one paper I found, I have no memory of reading the articles for it OR the class it was for. I majored in nursing and didn’t write many papers (wrote a ton of care plans and article summaries), so you’d think it would stand out. Nope.
It’s a bit scary, really. I sometimes wonder if I’m going to have senile dementia.
This doesn’t impact my ‘this is weird’ radar as much. I’ve run across old college papers and do not remember doing them…but there were so many. Many assignment you just wanted to get done and they didn’t settle into your long term memory methinks.
I’ve run across ones when I was younger…High school or early college and cringe a bit reading them as they are of learning/low quality.
However, I also run across ones later and go 'DAMN! I think I peaked 20 years ago!"
elfkin, dude - don’t leave us hanging! Did you re-try the olives and have they re-claimed their hold on you??
As for me, I can relate - I have swaths of time where the memories are down in there, but I have not accessed them in so long that they’ve either gone down the rat hole, or I really need a solid prompt to dredge the memory back up, like a unique smell, or running into someone associated with the memory that I haven’t seen in years…
I drink coffee, tea, beer and water, and occasionally wine. That’s it.
And yet there are a load of pictures of me from 15 years ago, taken over the course of a couple of years, where I often have a Coke can in my hand. No recollection that I ever drank it.
A lot of you folks sound like you need CAT scans or something.
I was gonna say that I learned just a few years ago that I am an Irish citizen because my father was born there, but that seems so lame compared to all the neurologic trauma that is in evidence here.
I have gaps in my memory like Chase. I have certain vivid memories of different stages of my life but sometimes I get told anecdotes by relatives that I don’t remember having happened. My mother who has Alzheimer’s remembers certain things better than I. But I attribute my problems to having had Fibromyalgia* for several years which often left me foggy and played heck with my memory. My memories of things that occurred during this period are of course the fuzziest. I also sometimes have vivid dreams that I will later confuse as memories.
Re: Fibromyalgia. I don’t want to get into whether it was a real disease or not, it’s been done here before. I had a tentative diagnosis of it from a physician but I did not follow up with him because he seemed less versed in the syndrome than I was and he never prescribed anything that helped so I just dealt with it. After several years of feeling like crap I don’t know what I did or what changed, I had been trying supplements and diet changes and now my symptoms are minimal, if I get flares they usually only last a couple days instead of weeks like before, but some memories seem to be gone forever.
One thing I have not forgotten is that I have and always will love olives. My preference of black or green changes back and forth, though.
One day when I was around 11 or so, I noticed a scar under my nose that you can’t see unless you really look. I had no recollection of having gotten it. So I say “Ma, do I have a scar under my nose?” “Oh, yeah, you got that ice skating when you were really little.” Cool.
Flash forward some years when mom is talking about my best friend growing up. “He didn’t mean to, but remember that time when he threw that snowball and it had a rock in it?” Me: “Yeah, that’s how you got that scar under your nose.” HUH?? “You told me it was from ice skating.” “Huh? It was from the snowball.”
The kicker is, I tried to pin this down again some time later, and she didn’t recognize either story and couldn’t tell me anything about the scar.
So, it’s something I still don’t know about myself, but mom clearly needs a CAT scan.
As I was stepping away from the toilet, I tripped over something (don’t remember what) and fell backwards into the bathtub, striking my head against the far edge of it. I supposedly extricated myself, wandered out into the hall and fell again at which point my wife called 911. I was supposedly transported to the hospital by ambulance while wearing only my underwear and I supposedly insisted that I could walk, damn it, and needed no damned wheel chair. I was supposedly assisted in walking to the ER, where I supposedly engaged a doctor in a lengthy conversation during which I supposedly excused myself, went into the men’s room where I supposedly blanked out again, falling and striking my head on the side of the toilet. I was supposedly wedged between the toilet and wall but had enough awareness to pull the emergency cord whereupon the staff supposedly entered the restroom, rescued me and admitted me to the hospital.
I have absolutely no memory of that entire chain of events.
About a year ago I found a pair of dress shoes in my closet. Apparently my spouse and I had gone shopping for them several months before that. I have no memory of shopping for them or buying them.
I discovered in my 20’s that I have a big round flat spot on the back of my head. Never knew it was there.
Certain sections of my life, and certain events, have been blocked out of my memory. It sounds like it’s not all that uncommon, based on this thread. It’s like I can scroll through the memories in my life like the file structure in my computer, but certain event folders are locked, for some reason. Such as, I’m pretty sure I was invited to so-and-so’s wedding, and I think I agreed to go… and my buddy picked me up and we drove out there together, I think… but the wedding itself? Ceremony? Reception? Hotel? Seeing friends, hanging out, eating, drinking, driving back home? Nope. Gone.
Oh- and according to my allergist, my nose was broken at some point. You’d think I would remember that.
I don’t have any strange memory gaps, but up until a few years ago I had no idea I was an Oops! baby. It makes sense since my closest sibling is almost 7 years older…but I had just assumed that my parents were dying to have another baby and it just took a long time. It was humbling when my mom let it slip otherwise…:eek:
I apparently could speak some words and phrases in an Indian dialect for a while. The summer when I was 2 1/2 my mother went to grad school in Auburn about 60 miles from our house and used to drop me at the home of a lady called “Mama Suda”, the mother of an Indian born professor who ran a sort of “unofficial” daycare at her house and came highly recommended. Mama Suda also took care of her grandkids who were about my age and according to my parents by the end of the summer she’d pick me up and I’d be playing with the Indian grandkids and conversing with them in their language, and she also had to “retrain” me to refer to a couple of things by their English rather than than their (whatever Indian dialect) names. I have no memory of the time, but have always thought it was cool that for a short amount of time I was a multicultural two year old.
I just realized I don’t know!