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The quickest thing to trigger these types of memories for me is a smell. I'll smell something, and get a sense of deja vu even if I can't exactly pinpoint where.
For some reason, I don't really remember a lot of my childhood. I remember little to nothing about elementary school. However, I can vividly remember watching the javelin event in the 1996 Olympics
A middle-aged man-onset memory that first resurrected itself in my mind a few years back was when I was in first grade during recess at the tether-ball game area. A bigger kid bully-type was causing trouble that eventually found its way to me.
My next memory of this is being in the principal's office with my Dad and this bigger kid bully who was in tears while rubbing his very red fleshy arm that was sporting noticeable teeth bite impressions, and the principal telling me, while my Dad looked on, how terrible it was what I had done.
Then the memory fog returns with no further recollection of this event, but I do believe this bigger kid bully never bothered me again.
Smell and sounds trigger often trigger those kinds of memories for me. Other times, I have no idea what brought it on. Coincidentally, this morning I woke up and one such flashback zinged me: my young classmates and I sat enthralled as a horse galloped full-speed down the road. There were only a few horses in the entire town, but one of them usually was penned a short distance away from school. Maybe something I was dreaming of led to this memory?
Maybe we remember those things better because they've been stored in our memory banks for so much longer. The brain is selective about what it keeps on ready reserve so not every memory is going to be retrievable.
My husband and I have a little conceptual game we play with this when we can't remember something from the past. We say that younger people are wired for digital memory retrieval but we are still on the old Dewy Decimal System. So the little guy up there in our brains is getting older and all crippled up with arthritis and he has to go hobbling around looking through all the card catalogues trying to find the right card. It's just going to take him a while to get it done. And if the card has been damaged or spirited away by a disapproving librarian all bets are off.
Anyway, I really enjoy some of those old memories that pop in unannounced. Shoots me right back into the ever more flexible time slip. Just as amusing as an old movie.
My husband and I have a little conceptual game we play with this when we can't remember something from the past. We say that younger people are wired for digital memory retrieval but we are still on the old Dewy Decimal System. So the little guy up there in our brains is getting older and all crippled up with arthritis and he has to go hobbling around looking through all the card catalogues trying to find the right card. It's just going to take him a while to get it done. And if the card has been damaged or spirited away by a disapproving librarian all bets are off.
I LOVE this!! Props!
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