So one time, I was on a bus and this guy next to me was very bored and said “When the bell rings, the time will be 10:30 am…DING!”, “When the bell rings, the time will be 10:31 am…DING!”, in a robotic voice.
At first I was confused. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I stared at him and I could just feel a wave of nostalgia. A very distant memory almost forgotten came back. I’m 7 years old, bored at home with nothing to do pre-internet. I call a landline number that has a service that tells you the time and just listen in… that’s exactly what the telephone lady would say. OMG he’s imitating the landline time service lol
It felt very satisfying too. It’s like a eureka moment but for memory rather than thought.
Anything similar happen to you?
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I recently found a candle that smells just like my childhood friend’s house. Instantly took me back to playing SNES emulators and staying over for dinner.
I heard smell is particularly good at bringing back memories, sometimes even in Alzheimer’s patients.
To me it’s hearing that seems the strongest, especially music.
I can still remember the smell of the gravel paths in my gradparent’s garden when it was raining. Oddly specific memory, innit? No other smells that I “remember”.
Music takes you back to the days that you first heard it, often precisely detailed and exact. From there, the rest of your life is available.
Agreed. For me, music takes me back to the place I was at when I was listening to it, especially when I’m traveling. I can recall specific situations in other countries where I traveled to just by hearing the songs I was listening to at the time.
When my grandfather died 25 years ago I snagged his bottle of cologne when we cleaned out his house. Every now and then I pull out that bottle and it’s like being whooshed backwards through time and space.
I have a small candy tin that i brought around to keep small toys when we travelled across countries with my family. Every couple or so years I open it and it still smells of strawberry after 15+ years, and I immediately run through my childhood travels
Fabuloso does that for me!
all the time, and some pretty amazing stuff too. like the time i was 16 and went with a friend to grab some weed—at a biker house. one of the bikers asked me if id read “the satanic bible” and i said no. so he picked it up from the coffee table and said here, check it out. i read some. he asked what i thought. “it looks more like “the materialist bible to me” i said, mentally kickin* myself as i said it. shit, is he gonna get mad? i remembered thinking. fortunately, he just laughed. i was dying to leave, which we did not long after.
i had totally forgotten this till one day it just popped into my head.
Not exactly memories but dreams. Sometimes I’ll have the same exact nonsense dreams I’ve had years ago. Other times I’ll randomly remember those dreams when I’m wide awake. But the thing is that I never remember what they’re about!
Might wanna write them down as soon as you wake up.
Dreams can sometimes inspire creative work so to me I like remembering them.
Often yes, it’s (partially) how repressed memories work. And yes, those are real, it’s similar to why doctors always mention amnesiacs from accidents recovering memories little by little (usually takes a week, the mind is amazing). On the downside, it’s the main reason why, when describing past events, I’ve noticed something I mention about my past might say one thing while another thing I’ve said elsewhere seems to have the potential to indirectly challenge that, because the pedantic aspects (not the memories themselves) shift.
“Repressed” memories aren’t a thing. I would suggest that you read up on the body of work by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. On the other hand, people forget thing, and certain things–smells, sounds–can trigger those memories. But these aren’t deeply traumatic memories that your unconscious mind is repressing to protect you, you’re just forgetting things.
Dr. Loftus has also authored a number of papers about the formation of false memories, and how people can be led to believe that they remember things that are absolutely, 100% false. Almost all of the cases of “repressed” memories from the 70s-90s, particularly during the Satanic Panic, are actually false memories created by the person asking questions. Unfortunately, much like the nonsense idea of multiple personalities, it’s one of those alluring concepts that simply won’t die, even among clinicians, despite the dearth of supporting evidence.
Interestingly, every time you recall a memory, it’s wiped out, and then has to be re-encoded. So recalling and rehearsing a memory makes it more likely that details will change and be lost. Even things that should be hugely significant–like where you were on 11 September 2001 (…for the people in their 30s and older…)–often get misremembered, and sometimes very strikingly.
I didn’t mean it in the trauma sense if that’s what you meant, just that people can have memories that are unusable some days and vivid the next, with a few causes possibly at play.
There are a lot of shows I watched that I was convinced were just fever dreams until I found them and the memories came flooding back.
I have an online journal that predates Facebook and other conventional social media, it’s abandoned now but the account still sits there. It was the free therapy of the early aughts. Anyway I read it over recently; I consider myself a person with a really very good memory, I even have some memories from toddlerhood, but there’s some serious trauma shit that I forgot about.
