Memory Lane

[snowychap]

13 hours ago, ccfcman said:

Have a similar thing for my Dad's old Rover 214.

It's an odd one but smell is a sense that really does stick with us. Madder still is humans cannot recall pain, or at least, physical pain.

 

13 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Dunno if I agree with this. I recognise a smell (or a taste) if I experience it again, but otherwise I can only remember it in the most abstract way. I would say that memory of pain is exactly the same. 

There's stuff about the proximity of the olfactory bulb to the hippocampus and the journey that the sense of smell takes when in the brain that suggest that smells trigger deep memories and helps to recall memories vividly.

Edited June 21, 2016 by snowychap

[maqroll]

On June 19, 2016 at 20:23, chrisp65 said:

There was a lot of fizzing and the thing disappeared before our very eyes. A misreading of the acid dilution by the science teacher.

 

Classic!

[maqroll]

16 hours ago, mjmooney said:

My earliest memory is standing on a platform waiting for the train to take us on holiday to Devon (dunno if it was New Street or Snow Hill - one of the VT railway guys can probably tell me). I was really excited as I'd never seen a train up close before, and I was expecting something like Thomas the Tank engine. This massive black steam engine came in belching steam and louder than anything I could imagine. I was terrified, and I remember hiding behind my Dad, clutching his trouser leg, crying. 

For years I assumed I must have been about three when it happened, but I checked with my parents and they were able to date it exactly, to the summer of 1955 - which means I was about 18 months old. 

Toughen yourself up for God's sake Mike

[maqroll]

When I was about 8 years old, me, my father and sister were out on a dinghy fishing for mackerel and flounder. That's when you could catch flounder around our area. We were all using drop lines. I felt a huge pull on my line, and I reacted, but my dad thought I was taking the piss. (I used to expertly mimic the sound of a police siren from the back seat)...he realized (sorry Tony) that I wasn't joking and grabbed my line. He started to draw the thing up, and then my sister started screaming and frantically trying to control her line. She hooked the thing's tail. So the shark was long enough to form a U underneath our boat. My father pulled the thing close enough to the surface that we saw how big it was, and it opened it's mouth to us, like trying to defend itself. My father took his knife and cut the line. We started to panic a little bit and he rowed like an Olympian back to dry land. We determined that it was a sick or dying shark, who sometimes enter rivers to die. The thing was big, but my dad still managed to draw it closer. 

I also saw old Kennebec drawings inside a hidden cave on a small island off the Maine coast. The Kennebecs inhabited much of the midcoast of Maine. They were driven out of the country entirely, by the British Crown, you assholes 

i saved a squirrel from the jaws of my cat Willie, when I was about 12 years old. I took the thing into a wooded area and put it on the ground. He scampered up my back leg, up my back and rested on my shoulder. He was thanking me, and didn't want me to leave him. Cute little critter.

I remember the older kids in my neighborhood park trying to sell me mescaline. The basketball nets were always stolen, so it was always just the rims. There was a swamp nearby and one time I saw a dead dog stinking up the area there for a whole summer. This was before people got all uptight about that kind of shit. The dog died a dignified death under that log, goddammit. 

 

 

[Seat68]

I have scars on both my hands where a pram collapsed on them. I used to go to a babysitter before I was old enough to go to school and i was playing with a pram in their back garden and it collapsed in my hands. I dont remember much about being there other than I used to hate going there. 

A few years back the son of the babysitter was jailed for child molestation. Not me by the way. 

[rjw63]

7 hours ago, Risso said:

 the back of my dad's Rover or other shit 70s car.

[maqroll]

22 hours ago, ccfcman said:

Madder still is humans cannot recall pain, or at least, physical pain.

[mjmooney]

6 hours ago, maqroll said:

When I was about 8 years old, me, my father and sister were out on a dinghy fishing for mackerel and flounder. That's when you could catch flounder around our area. We were all using drop lines. I felt a huge pull on my line, and I reacted, but my dad thought I was taking the piss. (I used to expertly mimic the sound of a police siren from the back seat)...he realized (sorry Tony) that I wasn't joking and grabbed my line. He started to draw the thing up, and then my sister started screaming and frantically trying to control her line. She hooked the thing's tail. So the shark was long enough to form a U underneath our boat. My father pulled the thing close enough to the surface that we saw how big it was, and it opened it's mouth to us, like trying to defend itself. My father took his knife and cut the line. We started to panic a little bit and he rowed like an Olympian back to dry land. We determined that it was a sick or dying shark, who sometimes enter rivers to die. The thing was big, but my dad still managed to draw it closer. 

I also saw old Kennebec drawings inside a hidden cave on a small island off the Maine coast. The Kennebecs inhabited much of the midcoast of Maine. They were driven out of the country entirely, by the British Crown, you assholes 

i saved a squirrel from the jaws of my cat Willie, when I was about 12 years old. I took the thing into a wooded area and put it on the ground. He scampered up my back leg, up my back and rested on my shoulder. He was thanking me, and didn't want me to leave him. Cute little critter.

I remember the older kids in my neighborhood park trying to sell me mescaline. The basketball nets were always stolen, so it was always just the rims. There was a swamp nearby and one time I saw a dead dog stinking up the area there for a whole summer. This was before people got all uptight about that kind of shit. The dog died a dignified death under that log, goddammit. 

 

 

SO much more American than all our wimpy British memories. 

[mjmooney]

Edit, wrong thread.

Edited June 21, 2016 by mjmooney

[Risso]

10 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Edit, wrong thread.

Damn, clicked on the thread hoping for an entertaining post about the sinking of the Lusitania!

[maqroll]

1 minute ago, Risso said:

Damn, clicked on the thread hoping for an entertaining post about the sinking of the Lusitania!

[mjmooney]

Taking that joke bizarrely seriously, I think we've had a conversation here before about how we 'inherit' memories from our parents. And if our parents are particularly old when they have kids, that can mean a LONG way back. The fact that mine were born in 1903 and 1914 means that the period before WWII does feel strangely familiar to me. Add to that a lifelong interest in early 20th C history, and I do feel quite close to that period, even if I wasn't actually alive then. 

But for real, actual memories, I'm afraid you'll have to make do with my 1950s steam train upthread. 

[Keyblade]

Lately it's been this

[Risso]

38 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Taking that joke bizarrely seriously, I think we've had a conversation here before about how we 'inherit' memories from our parents. And if our parents are particularly old when they have kids, that can mean a LONG way back. The fact that mine were born in 1903 and 1914 means that the period before WWII does feel strangely familiar to me. Add to that a lifelong interest in early 20th C history, and I do feel quite close to that period, even if I wasn't actually alive then. 

But for real, actual memories, I'm afraid you'll have to make do with my 1950s steam train upthread. 

True that.  Being born in 1971, the same amount of time had passed between then and the end of WWII, as there is between now and the start of the first Gulf War.  My grandparents still were very aware of the war therefore, so talked about it a lot.  As a kid it seemed like ancient history, with the old black and white photos and films etc, but the first Gulf War starting seems like yesterday.

Not exactly sure what point I'm trying to make, other than time's going by I suppose.

[choffer]

54 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Taking that joke bizarrely seriously, I think we've had a conversation here before about how we 'inherit' memories from our parents.

I've come to realise how much confabulation there is in a lot of my memories. 

I have a vivid memory of the day my mum had no money for food so we all walked the three miles up the hill to the Midland Bank in Cotteridge. You know, the one just next to Kings Norton Station. My mum begged the bank manager for a small loan as it was four or five days before payday for my dad and the bank manager felt so sorry for her, he lent her £10 out of his wallet.

Turns out that despite my memory of this event being so vivid, it actually happened six months before I was born when my parents were still living in Wokingham.

[useless]

I think Carl Jung wrote a lot about inherited memories. I have weird memory thing and it's not from a long time ago, where I strolled around one of the towns local to me, and found a location that I'd never been to before, it was like an old square with fancy statues and a water fountain. Only thing is I went back a week or so later and it wasn't there.

[choffer]

7 minutes ago, useless said:

I think Carl Jung wrote a lot about inherited memories.

Will Storr has a couple of good books that speak a lot about confabulation and the way the brain fills in the gaps. A lot of the focus is on how people believe the unbelievable but he also talks a lot about how people project themselves into memories that they couldn't possibly have.

[useless]

A lot of so called inherited memories, might perhaps just be 'false memories'. I know a few older people, who insist that when they were young they can remember it still being light in summer until 12 at night.

[Paddywhack]

I find it strange how the older you get, your perception of time changes and the past seems closer somehow. It does to me anyway.

I remember seeing footage of the Beatles as a kid and my mom and dad telling me it was music they listened to as kids. It seemed ancient, but they'd only split up 20 odd years at that point.

The second world war doesn't seem as long ago now as when I was kid. How does that work? 20 years have passed.

[useless]

I remember reading a theory that the more novel the things you do are, the longer time, seems to last. And obviously as a child, everything is pretty new. I think the idea is that new experiences slows time perception down but repetition makes time seem to go faster.