I’m a chick 
No, I haven’t tried them again. Something negative olive-wise must have happened between the time when I was a toddler and Vynce was, because I distinctly remember being about eight years old, watching him eat them and thinking that they looked gross.
Apparently, when I was 10 years old or so, I came home from school one day all upset because we’d been talking about families in class, and the teacher went over all the different types of families people can have(parents married, parents divorced, parents divorced and remarried, single parents, etc) and they didn’t talk about the type of family we had(parents living together but not married). Supposedly the resulting conversation with my parents started them on the road to finally getting married.
I figure that I couldn’t possibly have been that traumatized by the experience, given that I have no memory of it whatsoever.
Also, my family swears that I nearly stumbled upon a bunch of crocodiles in Costa Rica before a local warned me off. If this actually happened, I figure that I didn’t notice the local(or the crocodiles) at all and walked past them obliviously.
I always knew I was adopted at 4 days old. My parents never offered much information about my birth parents and I was never overly interested.
When my parents died, I found papers that indicated I was actually a foster child. While my parents brought me home at 4 days, there was a legal document changing my name from my birth parents last name to my parents name when I was 5 MONTHS old.
Kinda freaked me out a little to find out that I had a previous name.
My mom does the exact same thing. It drives me crazy. Come up with a story and stick with it, don’t make up new things when you can’t remember what you told me last time!
She also has a tendency to “not hear” anything she doesn’t like. I can tell her the same thing ten times and the eleventh time, she’ll be shocked that I haven’t told her this vital information before.
AFAIK, there’s nothing I don’t know about me that’s very important. I have quite a good memory. I think.
I’m told that I really liked the show Happy Days as a small child, but I have no recollection of having watched it before my teens. Even then it didn’t seem at all familiar.
Uhm…no I haven’t. Or…uh…what was the question? Heh. No, I haven’t seen a doctor about this and I have never had a CAT scan or anything. So far as I know, everything in me is A-OK, just have a very slippery mind in regards to my past. But my short term memory is fantastic.
What was I just writing about?
Afterthought in relation to some of the reasoning behind my lack of memory:
I had a pretty weird childhood and all in all, I was never a very normal kid. Something in my brain is just wired differently and everyone around me could tell. (There are many stories and examples, but I won’t torture you with those). That having been said, growing up as I did, I think to cope with life I just kind of blocked stuff out, and became consistently more capable of doing it as I grew up through my teenage years.
I have moved over 20 times in my life, and I travel light. Meaning, I don’t have picture albums, don’t have keepsakes from my childhood, etc. And of course I have never lived in one place for too long. My theory is, memory is an exercise our brain is constantly but unconsciously doing. But you have to have the equipment around you to do it. If you aren’t ever in the same house, can’t visit the same house, don’t have things to remind you of anything, your mind just kind of lets go, and becomes (again) increasingly capable at doing it.
Will all that moving around and awkward growing up, I PURPOSELY tried to always leave my past behind and start fresh wherever I went.
In other words, it kind of happened on its own (all the moving and never keeping anything around to remind me), it kind of happened voluntarily (me trying to leave the past behind), and it basically was all for the purpose of sheltering me from quite a bit of the cruelties of life (at a young age).
Its that, or that time I fell from the washing machine head first onto a concrete floor when I was a baby, really messed me up. (Of course, I don’t remember the incident).
Just for the record: my memory loss isn’t getting worse with time. I actually do remember most of my life from 1999 to present (I was born in 75). Before that, it is a hit and miss for years and situations. I can remember some things from kindergarten, but I can barely remember my time in college.
These days, I write a lot and keep almost anything I can get my hands on, just to make sure I will always have the tools to remember these years.
What? Why am I not wearing any pants!?
My mother tells me that when I was little, we visited a relative on a farm. I was the only child there, so to avoid the boring grown up stuff in the house I went in the backyard to play. (I hear I was about 5 or 6 years old.)
I didn’t know there was a bull in the backyard. Granted, it was a bazillion years old and skittish, but it was still a bull.
Back in the adult house, somewhere in the conversation they had made the connection that there was a bull in the backyard and I had gone out back to play. Adults came running out of the back door.
I was just being a spacey kid, running zig zags in between the sheets and shirts and what not that were hung on the clothesline. I heard somebody yell my name, and I thought it would be neat to hide from the adults behind the bedsheet in front of me. I threw the sheet aside and was face to face with this 1000 pound bull that was grazing there. I screamed like a schoolgirl and the bull let loose this unholy bellow and the parents say that both the bull and I ran out from behind the clothesline at almost exact speeds - in opposite directions. I ran straight to the adults and the bull ran forever. They tell me that we had both managed to calm down at about the same time after the traumatic face to face experience.
I have absolutely no memory of this occurrence, but mom swears that it happened.
And then later that night while you were testing some equipment, some kid wearing a life preserver came to the door and said you invented some ‘time machine’.
I have nothing else to contribute, except pop culture references 
Like Chase, I have very few memories of childhood or even young adulthood. I’ve been checked out, I’m bright, I’m a good student and can remember stuff about my classes and about topics I’m interested in, but most personal memories don’t last more than about four years for me. It’s on the spectrum of normal, just at the “lousy memory” end of things.
I didn’t have a particularly traumatic childhood or anything, nor was I ever dropped on my head that I know of. I just don’t remember little things like who my teachers were in junior high or who I dated for 6 months in college. (That last one makes Facebook a little awkward sometimes…)
Chase, how is your memory for names and faces? Mine is horrible. So horrible that I think that might actually be a dysfunction. There are people I’ve seen monthly for years I still don’t remember the names of or recognize them each month.
My recollection of peoples names and faces is terrible. It’s a problem when you live in a very closely knit social circle of about 500+ where everyone else knows everyones name, last names, who is married to whom, lineage, etc. When those conversations happen in my presence I just drift my attention to other things because I can’t recognize any of the names that people blurt out. My SO has to constantly explain to me who is related to whom in her family.
I’ve read that facial recognition and the link to names is handled by a specific part of our brains, so I am just assuming that part of me is a little lazy.
On the other hand, my directional/geographical memory is unreal. I can drive point by point to almost anywhere I have been in the past, regardless of how out of the way, “it was like 10 years ago and I only went once”, etc. If I’ve been there, I can find it.
I suppose we can’t all be talented at everything, and I just happen to lack some of this memory stuff. It’s freaky - no doubt - but I’ve become used to it.
[Elaine] Get…OUT! Me, too![/Elaine]
I wonder if there are enough people like us that we can get our own Syndrome.
Same here. I have no memory for directions, though, but I can usually remember exactly where on the page specific information I read is–that sort of thing. Fantastic memory for data, dates, trivia, song lyrics, but I forget people and events.
I’m shit on names and faces, but I also can locate a destination or item (say in a book, a page or in a room) after seeing it once. The exception to this is if I in a basement or a place with no windows.
I have pics of myself as a kid and teen etc, and I do remember the times the pics were taken, but don’t remember much else… I tend to remember moments, not entire events.
OMG…thank God. I thought I was the only one who had this problem.
I have this problem all the time. My Mother-in-law likes to tell me about nice stuff I evidently said about my husband (then-boyfriend) when I was in college.
No idea. She’s told me and told me about this stuff and I still don’t recall it.
My parents told me once about a gal I’d been very good friends with one summer, to the point of being inconsolable and sulking when we had to leave. She evidently remembers it too - but I still haven’t the faintest recollection of ever meeting her then. As far as my brain is concerned, I’ve only met her once, and it was a casual, “oh, hi, so your name is?”
My best friend recently mentioned the fish we kept as a pet in college. I still don’t remember it, even though she describes it very well.
Major portions of my life have disappeared into the ether. NO clue where it all went. And yet, I still have memories from age 3, when we took a trip to Niagara Falls and went behind the falls, and later on traveling to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and learning how to read maps.
I imagine you go to a lot of surprise parties.
Regards,
Shodan
Someone just posted a picture of me on Facebook from a party in 1995. Don’t remember a thing about it - in fact, I would have sworn to you that I hadn’t seen the girl in the picture with me since our high school graduation in 1992.
I have mentioned this before, but I have no memory of anything before I started kindergarten. No memory of the four+ years I spent in India, or anything about the first year here. So everything they tell me from those years is a surprise.
In more recent news, I have, or had, a scar on my left wrist - now that I look at it it’s almost faded - that I remember getting around the age of ten but have no memory of HOW I got it. The thing is, I remember having the memory of it but now all I remember is the memory of the memory. Since the scar is almost faded I wonder how long before I forget. I have two like this; there is a four inch long scar on my right knee that has the same story - I know I got it when I was around ten, I used to know how, I’ve since forgotten. That one is not fading.
This is a slight variation on what the OP is looking for, but I was in my mid twenties before I realized I had one of those “i” names. Needless to say, I’ve always known how to spell my own name, but it never occured to me that my name was in the same category as "Bambi or “Candi with an i” that is the butt of so many jokes.
I also did not know that the lower back tattoo I got 15 years ago was now so ubiquitous (and apparently cheesy) as to be labelled a “tramp stamp” until I saw “The Wedding Crashers”.
I went to the ear doctor worried about hearing loss, and was told that I had a perforated eardrum, and from the evidence it had been that way for 20 years or more. I had an operation to fix it, but I never felt like I could hear that much better. I know for sure I hear some sounds out of one ear better than the other (like my alarm clock–if the wrong ear is against the pillow it’s a distant beep) but I’ve been tested again and have been told everything is normal and my hearing is nearly perfect. Somehow, I think I cheated on my ear test.
A minor matter but a favorite story: My grandfather was a clergyman, semi-retired in Florida when I grew up in Illinois. All through my youth my parents took us kids to various Baptist churches, and though religion did not ‘stick’ with any of us I always assumed we were raised Baptist because Grandpa was Baptist. A few years ago I said something to this effect to my brother, who insisted Gramps was Lutheran. He called my dad to settle the matter. Methodist.