5 thoughts on “Memories”

  1. I have a couple of memories from earlier than 3-1/2, but I don’t call them memories – I call them “photographs in time.”

    The first is when I was 8 or 9 months old (I was born in August and the “photo” is from Easter). My aunt is holding me up to the bathroom mirror so I can see myself in my new Easter bonnet; I see myself in the mirror and the Texas sand stretching to infinity outside the bathroom window (which was next to the mirror). (And no, no one told me about this. When I mentioned this – in my teens – to that aunt, she was shocked and said it was impossible for me to remember that. But she acknowledged it was true, though she’d forgotten it until I said something, and admitted that no one could have told me as no one else was in the room.)

    The second is from when I was around 2 years old (based on when we lived in Baltimore). I was playing with my brother in our back yard, and the “photo” is of my mother at the back door, calling us in because a storm is coming. She’s gesturing at the sky; a large, bare tree is beside the back corner of house outside the board fence; there are 2 wooden steps up to the small landing at the back door. I can’t hear what she’s saying – it’s a photograph, not a movie.

    There are a couple of other “photos” from a young age, though I’m not sure of the age, and a sort of “movie” at around 3 (based on where we lived when), in which I hear myself asking my father if he wants a piece of candy (from a Whitman sampler). It’s a short movie – I don’t hear this answer.

    I always thought this was normal. My memories do become sort of a steady stream starting at about 3-1/2 (based on that’s when my grandmother came to get me because my parents were divorcing and it was just too much for Mama to handle both of us, but she needed to stay in our house until my brother finished the school semester, and from the time I got to my grandmother’s house, the “stream” of memories begins).

    I’ve always presumed that other people (though probably not everyone) had those “photographs in time” too.

  2. I clearly remember my aunt playing peek-a-boo with me while I was still a toddler in a crib. I had to have been less than two.

  3. My first detailed memory was pretty traumatic. I was trapped in some kind of growth chamber, fed oxygen from a belly socket, and I couldn’t get out no matter how much I thrashed at the walls with my stubby little limbs. So then I thought “calm down:”, there’s got to be a way out of here.” My first plan was to bribe some guards, but there weren’t any around, at least not that I could discern after several days of patient observatio. In my primitive state I seemed to also have been stripped of my wallet, which was quite disconcerting. Then I thought I’d call for help, but my voice didn’t work and I didn’t have access to any electronics or other com devices. Whoever put me there really screwed me over.

    The rest is pretty much like The Matrix, except that I was virtually helpless for much longer than in the movie, and I didn’t develop special powers.

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