Registered: Aug 2000
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Oxsan's stories have started me thinking (which is never a good thing). Memory is such a varied thing from person to person. He can obviously remember great detail about his life, sometimes from events that happends almost 70 years ago.

Jinx made a post recently about things she remembered from when she was 3.

Some people have a very database-like memory, able to store and retreive facts very easily. I don't.

I seem to have a great capacity for knowing completely useless facts, but I never remember where I learned them, or why. In other words, I remember stupid things. (Works great for trivia.)

I don't remember names at all. I'm horrid at it. I also have problems remembering faces. The weird thing is, I can remember pictures of people, but not really see their face in my mind in any real way. Probably why I have such a love for pictures.

I do have memories from my childhood, but they're all random and very vague. They ususally consist of brief flashes, with no context to put them in. I remember sitting in my dad's car, listening to the clock tick. (Yes, they used to tick). I remember sitting on a swing in my basement, crying, but I don't know why I was crying. Most of the incidents in my life that happened before about age 10, I remember only as stories told by my parents.

When I started the 10th grade, a girl in one of my classes that I thought I was just meeting, was very upset because she claimed that we had shared a class the year before, and had become very good friends.

The things that I remember the best from my life, are things that have made it into stories that I've told. It's rather like dreams. When I wake up from a dream, I have to tell it, even if it's in my head, or I'll forget it within the hour. My life seems to be like that in many ways.

I never really saw any of this as odd, but maybe it is.

So, how much do you remember of your life?

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Registered: Oct 2001
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I remember brief flashes from as young as eighteen months. It starts to trickle after that, increasing to a flood about age five. It's weird, however, how inaccessible most of that stuff is a good deal of the time. However, something can trigger a download at the drop of a hat, and I can still smell stuff from those times. Weird, I guess.

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Registered: Apr 2002
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Posts: 270

There's a period in my life that I can relive almost minute to minute. When I was about 7 I woke up late, and wondered why my mom didn't wake me up for school. I looked over and my oldest brother was gone, but my other one was still sleeping.

I walked down the steps to see what was going on, and in the family room was two of my aunts and my older brother, They all had a really weird look on there face, like someone had just died. They told me too sit down, so I did.

Then they choked out a few words. "Your Dad got shot last night, and chances are he won't make it." It hit me like a ton of bricks. then my other brother came down and they told him and he started crying, really hard. My aunts tried telling us it would be ok, but still it was hard.

Later that day we happend to be watching CNN and there we where, my family picture, and a story making my dad out as a hero. Shot in the parking lot of a grocery store, by 2 black men, who fled the scene. My Dad said he chased them but lost conciousness from his gunshot wound and wrecked into a house. Blood had to be pumped out of his lungs to keep him from drowning on it.

A few days went by and it just got weirder and weirder, he started changing his story while he layed in the hospital, Investigators got confused and no one knew what was going on. My mom was taken into custody and questioned for hours on end, on if she was the one who had shot him.

She denied everything, which she had full right to do, because she didn't do it. They police department, searched everything, every room, every drawer, in the house. They found a strange device, in the garage, that my dad had made.

He rigged a .22 up to a device so he could shoot himself in the back, so it would strike his vest. But somehow, it missed his vest and the bullet went into him nearly hitting his heart, and peircing a lung.

In the hospital weeks into recovery he finnally told the true story to my Mom who was visiting him.

He was so tore up over the divorce they where going through, he had made this device to shoot himself in the back, because him and my mom had identical .22 guns, he was going to come to where we were living, get my mom up and shoot her, and say that he shot her in self defense, because she had shot him first.

After all that happend, I got made fun of nearly everyday at school. Everyone would say, "Atleast my dad didn't shoot himself"
This went on for atleast 6 years.

I dont really know if this is relevant to the topic or anything because I was older, but the bulk of my childhood memeries are all related to this story in some way or another.

Either it be, my dad shooting himself. Or watching him beat my mom up, and threatening to kill her.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
Posts: 26420

Holy fuck dude. This topic just got owned.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3876

Helluva Experience, Cannibal. Thanks for sharing it.

Nymbus I have joked on this forum about experiencing TIA (Transitory Ischemic Anemia) which is quite common in folks my age but it really isn't a joke. I do now have moments when my mind goes blank for just a moment. If I sit quietly it quits in just a few seconds. It is kinda scary, It takes the form of forgetting why I went from the living room into the study and I have to stand quietly for a moment and lo and behold it will return to me that I came in there for a pen to write something down and that I am on the telephone with someone. Actually the period that I can't remember is very small--seconds usually. But it is still scary. It also only effects my memory of recent events or present events. I can still remember everything that happened in times past.As they say "Short term memory is the first thing to go."

When I was active in business management I was possessed of a phenomenal memory--especially for numbers. I can even today probably write down the engineering drawing numbers of nearly all of the parts of the B52 vertical stabilizer support bulkhead that I was responsible for the tooling of in 1954 and haven't seen a copy of the drawings since. The numbers range from 1-75034-01 to 1-75034-1403--not there are 1403 parts but there are about two hundred parts. This memory thing was effortless with me. I have frequently walked down a line of parts in the receiving department of the factory where I worked and merely lifted the receiving form of the parts out of the paper sack and glanced at the part number===maybe two or three hundred times and realize as I walk away that I could sit down and list all of those part numbers. There was an image in my head of my lifting up each receiver and reading the part number. Sometimes such memories would vanish in a day or so--other times it would last for months. Sometimes it simply did not happen. Once in a restaurant with a large group of friends in a dining club we passed by the wine rack and I ran my eyes down
the long row of bottles. We were seated a great distance from this wine rack. I could not see the labels from where we were seated. but I realized that I knew the vintage year of nearly every bottle in that line. I decided to be a smart-ass and told my secretary's husband sitting near me at the table to tell the waitress to go get a bottle of the wine from that line and I would taste it and tell him what wine it was and what year and whether or not it was from a southern slope. To tell her also to wrap the bottle in a towel so that I could not see the label. I watched as the waitress picked up a bottle compared it to my mental image of walking into the restaurant. She poured a sip of wine into my glass and I made a great show of tasting it and pursing my lips to draw air through it and even put a drop or two on my hands and rubbed them together and smelled them when the wine was warm then pronounced that it was a Barolo wine of 1955 from a southeast slope and was very good indeed. Everyone was flabbergasted (except my secretary who knew exactly what I had done) and I gained an instant reputation as the greatest wine taster in the world----I hardly had a taste after smoking since I was 17.

This gift was very important to me in management. In presentations to military groups which was a large part of what I did then I could quote whole pages of documents verbatim. Bear in mind that I was a victim of chance however. It was not something that I could plan ahead to do . It was something that I would suddenly realize I could do.

The whole thing went to hell in a handbasket when I retired in 1980, came back when I went back to work in 1988 for five years and vanished again when I retired in 1993. Now I have to carry my telephone number around in my wallet and address letters while I am at home with my address book.

I was an idiot memory savant.

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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Mountains
Posts: 4698

my two earliest memories are from when I was about 2 or 3..

I recall always being in my own little bubble of existance.. aware of what was going on around me but not being very concerned about it.. mostly just curious.. I liked touching things and climbing things and didn't so much like people.

the first memory.. I was at the pool with my mom.. she had put me in one of those orange tubes conected to a vest and I just bobbed on the water.. while she sat watching me from the side.. I don't recall how.. but I somehow flipped over upside down.. and hung there.. feet up in the air.. head underwater.. still in my little floaty vest.. I remember holding my breath and looking around and really liking the way things looked and felt.. and then I remember my mom (fully dressed) jumping in and yanking me out of the water and the confusion of why she seemed so scared.

the second memory is sitting with my parents at a show at Sea World.. way up in the stands.. my swimsuit was aqua with a ruffle around the waist.. I had my hair in pigtails.. and I was watching all the people.. who suddenly all seemed to be raising their hands.. and then I was annoyed because my dad was holding my hand up in the air.. and then someone walking in the aisle pointed at me and my parents let them take me down the stairs to the stage.. more annoyance. I recall it being me and another bigger girl up there and we handed rings to dogs that ran back and forth and my dog won.. then they sat me on a stool and blindfolded me.. and the crowd made curious sounds and I sat and listened to them.. then they got quiet and they took the blindfold off and there was this big bizarre creature right in front of me.. it was brown with a soft horsey nose.. I reached out to pet it and the crowd laughed for some reason..

I still can't remember what kind of animal it was.. just that I had never seen it before or since..

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Boston, MA, Center of the Universe
Posts: 4509

I think my first memory was when I was 2 years and a couple months old. I remember my mother told me that I was going to meet this guy that she'd been dating and his name was Bob. I remember being sure it was going to be Bob from Sesame Street, because I'd never heard the name "Bob" anywhere else before. I was pretty disappointed when it wasn't the guy from Sesame Street.

It's pretty weird when your first memory is meeting the guy who will ultimately become your stepfather.

I have scattered memories between then and kindergarden, but no real clear idea of the order in which they occurred.

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Registered: Jan 2003
Location: mediocre apartment
Posts: 2636

my memory is deplorable. i can hardly remember anything that happened, and have to often be caught up on events that i was witness too. whats worse, is that i remember things incorrectly, and often remember entire fabrications. I catch myself asking my friends if they remember this or that and they tell me that it never happened. it's really disconserting, but i think it comes from the same part of my mind that visualizes everything, so if i think about something it forms a memory as vivid reality.

i can't remember numbers or what to do with them, which makes me really bad at math. i can't remember people's names, either, or where i know them from. i saw some people saturday that i raced against a few weeks ago, they recognized me and my girlfriend told me who they were. i felt sort of like the president or something, with an aid telling me who all the foreign nationals are.

the things i can remember are limited to either historical tidbits or things like instructions. i can remember each step in the instructions for a model car i finished years ago, and i can go into great detail about the steps it takes to fix this or that in my real car.

the earliest memory i have comes from way back. i remember waking up in the middle of the night to a cat screaming a dog barking. my parents and my sister and i ran out to see what was the matter, and i remember my mom telling me to go inside or whatever because the dog killed our cat. crazy thing is my parents insist that i wasn't born when that happened, but i can vividly recall it. its one of the many instances where i can't trust my memory.

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Registered: Apr 2001
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the earliest memory i can date is the birth of my brother when i was 2. there are other (most likely earlier) things i remember but i couldn't say for sure when they happened. small house, swings made of rope. smelled of dust. i was probably 1, but i'd have to ask my parents. i've got that sort of memory, i can recall most everything that happens, things about people i meet, etc (though not everything i see, a la mr ox). if you have a good memory, you can convince people you're smart. or, intelligence IS memory. or, no. maybe intelligence is the abilty to retain and connect facts. something like that.

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Boston
Posts: 6985

My first memories are when I was probably 2. I know one of them was, the other couldn't have been any later than that. I remember my parents' dobermans had chewed up one of my plastic toys, some giant wrench of some sort, and I was crying to my dad about it as I kept looking at the toy and the dog running free across the lawn. The other was when my sister was born, I remember my mom at the hospital before she was born and then my sister in a pink outfit crying her head off, I think we were leaving at that point.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
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quote:

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though not everything I see, a la Mr. ox

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BP, I think intelligence is centered on problem-solving. I have a fair memory, and I've read quite a bit, but I am not what I would consider terribly intelligent. I'm just a good test-taker. But a lot of times I couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel. I'm just absent-minded.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
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[QUOTE]Absentminded[/QUOTE

AND...No I'm not going to say it.

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i think the majority of people would never know the difference. i was really just referring to what people generally call "intelligence". i don't say this to pat my own back, as i can do that without typing so damn much, but people have seemed to call me intelligent so far often without knowing anything about me. i am left to assume that the air of smarts comes from something readily perceptible, which is most likely my manner of speech and behaviour (or the glasses), vocabulary and stores of knowledge being results of memory exclusively as far as i'm concerned (that being the most logical step given my childhood traits of curiousity and the like). that doesn't account for the ability to connect facts as i mentioned above, which may actually be the defining factor, what seperates the autistic fellow with the photographic memory from our oxsan here.
i mean, i'm a good test-taker myself. this is because i retain facts. there isn't much more to that.
i also, personally, associate "wit" with intelligence. i'm not sure when that came about, but i think it works out. not that it matters much.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: GA
Posts: 6969

i think i remember everything, but who knows really?
im often reminded of things i had forgotten.
i remember faces well.
some parts of high school and college are a bit blurry, but im sure that is just drug related....how great are the drugs if you cant remember what you did?

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: All East Coast : USA
Posts: 2450

i lost my entire post, it was funny

summing it up

age 2-3 in preschool, i had a teacher in pre-school who was beautiful and i wanted to kiss her and have sex with her, i didn't even know what sex was, or at least i don't think i did at the time, but if it was anyone, it was her.

heh

/canned the "i was 1 1/2 and got my swerve on with the 15 year old swedish babysitter, but can't recall it"

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: All East Coast : USA
Posts: 2450

only other thing i can remember was a shiny plastic apple, about 6" tall, with a face on it and a bell inside, don't even know how young i was .. (15,16? heh)

my mom sold the thing at a yard sale

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Registered: Apr 2002
Location: At Home
Posts: 4174

I only remember things I can recall, the rest I have forgotten.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

quote:

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Originally posted by oxsan
I do now have moments when my mind goes blank for just a moment. If I sit quietly it quits in just a few seconds. It is kinda scary, It takes the form of forgetting why I went from the living room into the study and I have to stand quietly for a moment and lo and behold it will return to me that I came in there for a pen to write something down and that I am on the telephone with someone. Actually the period that I can't remember is very small--seconds usually. But it is still scary.

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Registered: Jun 2002
Location: Oz
Posts: 944

One of my first memories is my mum telling me that I was going to have a little brother or sister & me thinking well I don't want it


missjo
We were driving past the hospital a week after he was born & I turned to my mum & said
Can we take him back now
she thought it was cute
I was deadly serious

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35669

quote:

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Originally posted by DevilMoon
*snip*

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