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It's kind of fascinating trying to think back of the earliest memories I still (or used to) remember. I'm not "old" at all but still these distant memories are literally from another world (in the sense that my mental model of the world was very different, as well as all the changes it went through)
My oldest memory is a clown holding a bunch of balloons flying over the fence at my first birthday party. I then tried to fly with the baloons when i got them.
I told my mom about it decades ago, and she said there was a clown that jumped over the fence. Then I spent the rest of the party running around the house holding the balloons.
To be fully fully transparent I did use LLMs (asking stuff in the google search bar) in some phrases I was having trouble to find the right words since English is not my native language.
But I’m glad you noticed I did try to write it all by my own with my own style as flawed as it could be
There is also when you parents or family members tell you stories of when you were kids and many years later you remember them but now you can't tell if you actually remember them or someone told you about it
I do remember a dog sticker from my crib. I know this because when I was 10, I visited a faraway aunt and asked my dad about the sticker on their bathroom wall. "I have seen this one before! Where did I see it?" He said they both bought a sticker pack when I was just born, and she put it in her bathroom and he put it on my bed.
I remember an absurd amount of things from 3 onwards, like not liking it how I was occasionally the last one to be picked up from Kindergarten, or that there were two parallel glass tunnels connecting buildings in my kindergarten, and I always wondered how to get to the other one (it was just for staff).
I do remember the first time I got brought to kindergarten, and how later I wished to go on my own and my mother was against it.
I do remember being told by my dad that I will lose most of my memories of this age, and it made me sad: how can I just erase all these wonderful memories of my friends and all the toys and things we have here? I wished for my last birthday, as I was turning towards 6, be remembered by me like it is, for the rest of my life.
I remember the way to my kindergarten from the flat we lived in, I remember the layout of the place, I remember a lot of the toys, I remember a climbing rack, I remember the carpets and other floor covering, I remember every room, including the long table they set up for birthdays with you sitting on one end.
All rooms are empty of people. I don't remember a single face.
I've had a very detailed memory of the surroundings of my childhood home, which changed when I was 3-4 (major construction in the neighborhood, rerouting a street).
We never had any family pics showing any of the stuff that I remembered, or remembered remembering... Well, some time ago I went searching for other people's pics and videos of the area from those years, and I actually found a couple, and they were exactly what I remembered.
But it all feels to me like I'm remembering reminiscing about these things at age 7-10, not really direct memories, a retelling. Surprisingly good one, too.
Your memory encoder/decoder manager the hippocampus must be working otherwise you would not be able to be learn.
I reckon that these memories are pruned by not being recalled strengthening the neurons making it up because they are not as important and take up bandwidth for the more important stuff like surviving as an infant in a physical world filled with your care takers.
I remember I grab and hold a vacuum cleaner and stand up and my parents are shouting "Look! He is standing the first time!" and I was puzzled what is so fuss about me standing.
But if it was my first time standing on my own, that must be 6-12 months old. If so how can I recognize my parents language so clearly?
Another memory was, There was a plush toy I really wanted, A gorilla holding banana, at a local supermarket called SATY. So I demanded my parents to buy it by speaking fluently.
Later, my parents told me a totally different story. Suddenly, I started shouting "Gori! SATY! Banana!" endlessly. It took them a while to figure out I wanted a plush of Gorilla holding banana sold at SATY.
I have a memory of myself lying motionless for what felt like forever and staring at a wallpaper featuring Disney characters. Years later I found photos from when I was around 1 year old and the home had those wallpapers (we stayed there for a few months). I remember feeling somewhat self-aware, like I was trying to understand why I was lying there, what those characters on the wallpaper were, what I was doing there at all. And I strongly felt the passage of time, like the whole episode dragged on forever. Maybe I had just woken up while my mom was in the kitchen? It's like I suddenly became self-aware, maybe that's why I remembered it :)
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 37.5 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_and_perinatal_psychol...
Years of low tolerance and high blood pressure aint paying off Tom!
Not too many years left now
I told my mom about it decades ago, and she said there was a clown that jumped over the fence. Then I spent the rest of the party running around the house holding the balloons.
But I’m glad you noticed I did try to write it all by my own with my own style as flawed as it could be
I do remember a dog sticker from my crib. I know this because when I was 10, I visited a faraway aunt and asked my dad about the sticker on their bathroom wall. "I have seen this one before! Where did I see it?" He said they both bought a sticker pack when I was just born, and she put it in her bathroom and he put it on my bed.
I remember an absurd amount of things from 3 onwards, like not liking it how I was occasionally the last one to be picked up from Kindergarten, or that there were two parallel glass tunnels connecting buildings in my kindergarten, and I always wondered how to get to the other one (it was just for staff).
I do remember the first time I got brought to kindergarten, and how later I wished to go on my own and my mother was against it.
I do remember being told by my dad that I will lose most of my memories of this age, and it made me sad: how can I just erase all these wonderful memories of my friends and all the toys and things we have here? I wished for my last birthday, as I was turning towards 6, be remembered by me like it is, for the rest of my life.
I remember the way to my kindergarten from the flat we lived in, I remember the layout of the place, I remember a lot of the toys, I remember a climbing rack, I remember the carpets and other floor covering, I remember every room, including the long table they set up for birthdays with you sitting on one end.
All rooms are empty of people. I don't remember a single face.
If there was a helicopter in the movie, then we can confidently exclude Saving Private Ryan.
We never had any family pics showing any of the stuff that I remembered, or remembered remembering... Well, some time ago I went searching for other people's pics and videos of the area from those years, and I actually found a couple, and they were exactly what I remembered.
But it all feels to me like I'm remembering reminiscing about these things at age 7-10, not really direct memories, a retelling. Surprisingly good one, too.
I reckon that these memories are pruned by not being recalled strengthening the neurons making it up because they are not as important and take up bandwidth for the more important stuff like surviving as an infant in a physical world filled with your care takers.
But if it was my first time standing on my own, that must be 6-12 months old. If so how can I recognize my parents language so clearly?
Another memory was, There was a plush toy I really wanted, A gorilla holding banana, at a local supermarket called SATY. So I demanded my parents to buy it by speaking fluently.
Later, my parents told me a totally different story. Suddenly, I started shouting "Gori! SATY! Banana!" endlessly. It took them a while to figure out I wanted a plush of Gorilla holding banana sold at SATY.