Sorta like the OP—a big blank…
Hmmm, that was weird.
This is what I originally posted… Or tried to.
Or did I? Dang I should know this…
++++++++++++++++
It’s 1978. I’m an 11-year-old kid walking on inch-thick ice when I slip and my feet shoot straight up into the air and my head slams into the ground with the audible crack of a homerun baseball.
I get up, a huge bump swelling on my scalp. Vision in my left eye is filling with yellow sparks that leap and swirl. I trudge back to the house lamenting the ice cream cone I dropped. Twenty minutes later, my speech is slurred, having trouble staying awake… I pass out.
Two hours later, I’m awake. I don’t know it yet, but I have severe retrograde amnesia that will last several hours.
My mom asks me to say my name. I wonder why she’s crying and figure it has to do with my name. Maybe if I say it, she won’t be sad anymore. So I try to answer… My mouth moves, but nothing comes out but drool. Something’s wrong but I’m not sure what exactly.
A little later, I can make sounds and she asks me to say the alphabet. And I do which really should make her happy, but instead it freaks her out… Because I say it in French (of which I know just a little. My native tongue is English, well, American anyway.).
So now she asks me repeat after her exactly: “One, two, three…” No problem, I figure. I know those words and what they mean. So I say: “Un, deux, trois…” More crying from mom. What’s wrong with her anyway? I repeated what she said exactly.
The interesting thing here is that it’s almost as if I had begun to age from age 1 to 11 over the next hours. I go from drooling and speaking monosyllables to short sentences to paragraphs.
At first, I only remember my older brother. Then, suddenly I remember my younger brother and can relate stories about him. Only later do I remember my youngest brother’s name and other info. It’s as though I didn’t remember him because the first time I was at that mental age, he hadn’t existed yet.
Five hours after the accident, I’m fine, albeit with a screaming headache, nausea, and a softball sized egg on my skull that will wither to a small bony knot and then disappear over the next 10 years.
The only good things to happen as a result of the experience.
-
The next day, I get a free ice cream cone when the server sees the lump on my head and asks what the hell happened.
-
On Monday, my math teacher demands to know in front of the class why I hadn’t done my math homework.
“I had amnesia.” The class erupts in laughter. “No, really, I had amnesia.”
The teacher is sick of my lame excuses and wants to make an example of me. She calls my parents on the spot.
And, oh, the look on her face…
That is a really interesting story. However, my impression is that you were extremely lucky that your speech and memory came back.
There are two types of amnesia I’m familiar with. One is the cartoon type, where you get hit on the head and can only speak French from that point on, or something equally silly. The other is soap opera amnesia, where people wake up from a coma going “Who am I? What’s my name? Who are all these people around my bed?” My impression has always been that both types are extremely rare, and that if you get hit that hard on the head, you’re lucky if more and longer-lasting damage has not been done.
That story is far worse than my own.
Over the summer got mugged. After about 20 seconds of the mugging it all goes blank. Next thing I know it’s about 10 minutes later and I’m upstairs in a guy’s apartment, in midsentence about fishing.
Go figure.
Can I tell about someone elses story? No? Well, I’m gonna do it anyways, but I’ll try and keep it short 
After a field party (ok, prom), my friends J and T were playing tag the next morning, and J fell down and bumped her head, but didn’t think much of it at the time. A little while later, a third friend, E, turns to me and says “Something is wrong with J. She just started playing with the dog, and asked when it got here, and the dog’s been here all morning!”. So I go talk to J to see what’s up, and she tells me shes tired (hadn’t slept all night, and was somewhat hungover) and that she was feeling a little woozy because she fell and bumped her head, but that it would be ok.
I then sat and talked to her for a while, and every 10 mins or so, she’d ask if she’d told me that she’d bumped her head. I kept answering yes, but at this point wasn’t too concerned, since J can be pretty spacey even in the best of situations.
A while later, though, it became “I think I hit my head when I was playing tag with T”, which got me a little concerned. It then became “I think I hit my head somehow”, which progressed to “Did I hit my head?” All of this was in the space of about 45 minutes.
At this point, I begin to get worried, so I go back to E and the rest of the people and tell them that J isn’t doing so well, and I think we should go to the hospital. Friends agree, and we pack up tents and bags and bottles, etc, and J, T and L hop in my car and drive off. By this point, J is a repeating loop of “Did I hit my head?”
“Yes”
“That would explain why it hurts”
“Yes”
“where are we going?”
“The hospital”
"Why
"“because you hit your head”
“That would explain why it hurts”
{Pause}
“Did I hit my head?”
Imagine saying this in a normal conversational speed, with a 30 second pause. Literally, this is how limited her short term memory had become. At one point we started just saying we were going to T’s house, then home, because it was a bit less annoying to explain to her the whole hospital thing. But after dropping T off, well, then there was no choice but to continue with the loop.
She also was punctuating the above with introductions to her Teddy bear, which was “such a classic bear. My mommy made him”, which did make her a little easier to respond to.
We get to the ER, she giver her name, address, medicare info etc with no problem, but when the nurse asks why she’s there, she turns to L and I and says “why am I here?”. Nurse says “head injury -amnesia” before we get a chance to say anything! 
We then have a 45 minute wait in the Er, with her asking why she’s there, concluding that thats why her head hurts, and introducing us (and everyone else in the ER) her bear. She does this in both english and french, btw, with basically literal translation.
Fortunately, by the time the Dr. sees her, she’s gotten back to something like a 15 minute loop rather than 2 minutes, and Dr says theres no concussion, and its a normal response to a head injury, she’ll be better, but to come back if she starts feeling ill.
We then drive her home. her parents are outside, and they want to know where we’ve been. J promtly says “Hospital - but I don’t know why”. Her parents nearly freak, and L and I are stuck trying to explain what happened.
Luckily, everything did turn out ok, and she had no after-effects of this whole ordeal. It’s been 4 and a half years, and she still doesn’t quite know what happened that day, except through our stories.
We do occasionally tease her about it, though, and if she ever reads this, I am SO DEAD!
Ok - it wasn’t all that brief, but its a funny story (in retrospect. It was damn scary at the time…)
Now, do you consider that actual amnesia, or as a blackout in your memory due to stress and shock? When I was eight some terrifying happened to me and my then two-year-old brother- something that I’m not going to go into details about on a MB- that unfolded over a few hours. I remember it in sharp detail, except for about 10-15 minutes of it towards the very end, when we were finally safe. I’ve been told what happened then, but I don’t remember it at all, and I didn’t even remember it a few days after it happened so it’s not as though the memory has merely eroded since it was many years ago. My memory skips from being in danger to safe and sound with no in-between time at all. I’ve always considered that rather scary.
What was it like? I don’t remember.
I once new a girl who was in a car accident (she was not driving) and had severe amnesia. Sh was thrown from the vehicle, and amazingly suffered very little damage except for a bump on the head, And that she had completely forgotten the previous year. Her entire Sophomore year of high school was gone, she did not remember that a good friend had committed suicide, she did not remember learning to drive, she did not remember new years 2000.
Everything from that year was gone. She just awoke in the hospital and thought that everything was sort of fine (thinking that all she had forgotten was the accident) untill she saw a newspaper and started to freak out.
Of course my whole reaction to it was different. I had only met her once before and had ended the meeting by calling her an evil bitch. I sort of regretted that (although she damn well was). She did not think I was so bad of a guy the next time I met her.
Hehe. I can not get over the fact that I am one of the very few people in the world who had a second chance to make a first impression, and that I took such great advantage of it.
That made me think of the adults’ amnesia surrounding some terrifying childhood experiences in It, by Stephen King.
You didn’t live in Derry, Maine, at the time, did you?
I’m quoting this, because it is what I would have said if Smeghead hadn’t beat me to it. 
Well, the closes couple of cases I can recall (No pun intended) to classical “Soap Opera” amnesia (i.e. Someone gets a bump on the head, and loses all memory of who they are, but can still walk, talk, ride a bike, etc.) were from an issue of National Geographic a few years ago. One woman had suffered a head injury, and lost almost all her memory. No life history, and she didn’t even know the meanings of idioms like “It’s raining cats and dogs.” She basically had to relearn most of everything, and never got her original memory back. And I can recall a few cases of people losing years worth of memory from their lives, but I’ve never heard of someone losing ALL of their memories of life, but retaining their learned skills.
Carry on,
Ranchoth
I do have childish things that are blocked out but have been told to me… but I am semi-certain other things that I refuse to remember from the same time period are stuck in my head but I have no clue about them. shrugs Luckily last time I banged my head I didn’t get any amnesia… I whacked it pretty hard on cement after slipping on ice…
I had a very bad depression the year after my dad died. One of the “side effects” was some memory loss of certain random events. Not amnesia exactly, but freaky nonetheless. I still occasionally have people saying to me, “I can’t believe you don’t remember that!” when they are remembering some conversation, movie or event that they KNOW I participated in. Yet I draw a blank.
Man. It was a bad year.
Come to think of it, most of high school is like that. I don’t remember much of it either…
A story about my son’s friend.
Hubby took our son and a couple of his friends water-skiing. The kids were trying out a new wakeboard. The young lady, J took a rather abrupt fall and slapped her head on the water. She got up and tried again immediately, and all three of the boys had taken harder falls at faster speeds so no one really thought much about it.
Before they arrived home, J’s mom was on the phone to me, asking what happened at the lake and related that J had come unglued when she came in the door because she couldn’t remember where she’d been.
About that time Hubby and teen pull in the drive with the boat. He tells J’s mom that she was fine when she got out of the truck other than trying to take his back-pack (mistaking it for hers, so insistant that he had to show her his clothes in the pack before she’d believe it was his).
They ended up going back over there and taking her to the ER, I kept the little sister.
She was fine in the truck, identifying songs and artists and singing along with the radio and chatting with the boys about school and church activities. Turns out that hubby had seen her hesitate before she went in the door, and that is apparently when the memory loss set in. This happened on a saturday and she lost the entire weekend from Thursay through the boating trip. By the time she went in the house she couldn’t remember where she’d been or what she’d been doing, couldn’t understand why she had a wet swimsuit on beneath her shorts or who she’d been with or where her backpack was. (She hadn’t taken a backpack to the lake.) It was several weeks before the weekend began to come back to her and she remembers going to the lake, but not falling on the wakeboard.
Of course we tease her about it when we give her a ride home from school or an activity.
- as she heads into the house -
“Hey J?”
-she turns back to see what I want-
“You were at the high school, watching the football game and we stopped for smoothies on the way home. That’s why you have a half finished smoothie cup in your hand.”
Malice, your story sounds like your brain did a reboot! Cool!
I’ve been through this.
In college I was playing on an intramural football team. We had a game that evening.
I can remember deciding to skip my 2PM class that day. Then I’m waking up in the hospital the next morning.
Apparently I got elbowed to the forehead during the game. I didn’t pass out and continued playing but one of my pals suspected something was wrong when I started acting strange.
Fortunately, despite my suggestion, they didn’t let me drive to the hospital.
So there’s maybe about 18 hours (including 4+ pre-injury) that are gone for good. It’s been fifteen years or so and I don’t think those files are going to turn up.
I can remember select flashes from the hospital prior to ‘waking up’. Things like trying to define the 1989 Cubs starting lineup for a doctor. Disbelieving my friend when he told me the Cubs were in first place in September. But that’s about it.
Cool stories, guys.
Keep 'em coming!
I think I had more of a concussion than amnesia but it happened when I was 8.
I have always had very low blood pressure and faint pretty easily. I usually rode my bike to school and the ride consisted of a big uphill and big downhill. I was trying to keep up with an older friend and pedaled really hard on the uphill. On the downhill, I passed out, fell off my bike and landed, face first, into a brick wall.
Obviously I remember very little of this but was told that I kept calling for “Lucy” (I didn’t know anyone by that name). Strangely, I vividly remember seeing my mother run down the hill towards me but later found out she met the ambulance at the hospital.
I “woke up” a few days later in the hospital and cried when I saw myself in a mirror. My sister and mother laughed and said I looked a million times better than I had two days ago. It took me awhile to process that I had lost some days.
I did have a small incident once. I was involved in a car accident, and hit my head on the windshield. The driver’s side door was crushed in. I “woke up” outside the car, crying and being talked to by an acquaintance who happened to see the accident and stopped. I didn’t remember the crash, or getting out of the car, or talking to the guy.
My parents were called, and they took me to the hospital with a grapefruit sized knot on my forehead. They told me I did not have a concussion.
I had amnesia?