I've always had a bit of a temper. Liable to get into a strop at a perceived injustice even before I knew what justice was. Which probably explains my earliest memory. If it is a memory that is.
The ingredients are a window, a cot, a blanket, an enamel pail, a door, my parents and a poo. I'd just performed in my nappy and it was really very pleasant. Satisfying, warm, soft and good to have got rid of. I could see my mother at the bottom of my cot and about to change me only she didn't. My father came in and suddenly she was talking to him. After a while my poo got chilly and a bit wet and nasty to be lying in. I began to cry but nobody paid attention. I cried louder. No response. I got angry and gave it more wellie. Quite a lot more. Why was I having to wait ? She'd been all set to go. My strop gained momentum. All the attention was on my father. What about me ? ME ! ME ! ME ! But I was ignored. How could I be ? Were they deaf ? I was incandescent with rage, roaring like a bull, ready to burst a blood vessel. And that's where the memory ends. If it is a memory that is. Because the cot was around until I was five as was the blanket and the pail. The window no. The window blew in during the Clydebank Blitz. My mother described how she and my father had rushed down to their little cubbyhole under the stairs with their ration books, gas masks and identity cards then realised they'd forgotten the baby. They raced back upstairs to their flat and fortunately got me before any bombs fell. So I knew about the window and I knew my cot had been in front of it.
Years later I told my mother about this memory but it meant nothing. I was always pooing in my nappy and screaming to have it changed. But she admitted it was strange. I had placed the cot correctly. In front of the window but set back from it. And the door was right too. Behind on the left. And the pail. Underneath the cot bottom right. Not things I'd been told.
Children don't remember things before three of four they say. So is this a real memory ? And if so why remember such an ordinary incident ? Or why invent something so mundane. I don't remember my thoughts. They are guesswork. It's the emotion, my rage and the attention focused on me being taken away. That's what's stuck. The injustice of it.
By the time I had other memories the room and the window no longer existed. I was living miles away in the country in a wooden hut. I could walk and talk and didn't roar like a bull any more although I cried from time to time. My anger over injustice was still there but mostly my tears were for skinned knees.
7 comments
HappySnapper said:
tiabunna said:
Colin Ashcroft said:
My earliest memory ( that I am sure is my own) is pre school but I was probably about 4 years old and it was an adventure to the end of the street across a road and down a hill to a stream - it is quite vivid and I was on my own. Mum doubts this story as she would never have let me out of sight for so long to be able to do this :-)
Jean replied to Colin Ashcroft:
MaggsMep said:
Dinesh said:
How can we square this feeling of rightness with the very real possibility that we are wrong? This is a question that haunts all the ‘wrongology,’ not just errors of memory. The problem is suggested by the very phase “the feeling of knowing.” In life, as in language, we begin with a psychological state (the “feeling” part) and end up with a claim about the truth (the “knowing” part). In other words, we feel that we are right because we feel that we are right: we take our own certainty as an indicator of accuracy. This isn’t completely foolish to us, since studies show that there is some correlation between confidence and correctness. But it isn’t completely foolproof, either. As the case of flashbulb memories makes clear, our certainty reflects the existence of a particularly inner picture. But nothing in life guarantees that this picture reflects the real state of affairs. ~”Being Wrong” ~ Cathy Shultz
www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong#t-121484
Doug Shepherd said: