Strangest 'false memory' someone has of you?

[Eastie77]

I created a similar thread to this years ago and found it fascinating so thought I'd restart a new one:)

The strangest one for me is still the one I wrote about last time: I bumped into a former colleague who I worked with many years ago. When I told him I had two children he said ah yes, I remember when you were pregnant in the office. Except I fell pregnant years after I left the place where we worked together. However he distinctly remembered my pregnancy, the baby gifts colleagues got for me and the 'baby shower' lunch I had. He rememberd signing a congratulations card for me.

He remained absolutely convinced even when I pointed out my eldest's childs age didn't match up with the time I worked there and seemed to think I simply forgot when I left There was no-one else in our office who looked remotely like me and no other pregancies he could have confused me with as it was a male dominated office.

Still puzzles me to this day!

A previous colleague of mine was convinced that my DH was called Steve. That one wasn't, and the current one isn't either

Bizarrely, that I used to wear contact lenses. A friend is convinced I needed contact lenses when back when. I've never had any eyesight issues. As much as I tell him my vision is and always has been fine he is determined I wore them.

*way back when

An old colleague was adamant I was at her wedding. It got to the point she was quite snippy whenever weddings were mentioned and would say “don’t waste an invite on Lyra, she’ll forget she attended in years to come”

Firstly I didn’t know her when she got married. Secondly on the day of her wedding I was flying out on holiday on a flight so turbulent and vomit inducing the date is engraved on my brain because I basically spent the whole week worrying about the flight home.

The father of a friend of my teenage son told him I threw a drink over him in a club when we were in our early twenties (25+ years ago.) I'm sure I would have remembered it. We get on well at events our sons are involved with but I can't even remember meeting him until a few years ago.

That I was very ill with tonsillitis when we were at university. I had my tonsils out long before I went to uni. And I was only ill with hangovers.

Absolutely adamant, though.

A woman where I work was convinced I worked with her (albeit in a different department a few years previous).

A woman at the school gates came up to me and began reminiscing about our nights out together when we were in our early 20s.
She knew my name and apparently we worked in the same building ( I didn't work there ever) but I don't know how she knew my name

A friend of a friend remembers our weekend in Blackpool and me being the one who helped her back to the hotel when she was ill and sat with her all night.
Thing is, I didn't go.

This Christmas my mum came out with some thing off and false. I have small downstairs wc, it’s a small windowless cupboard. She said ‘can I use the loo or are you drying clothes in there again?’. I have not ever had clothes drying in there, we use a spare room upstairs with the window open. When I have guests at Christmas I put all laundry away . She was adamant she was right even though my husband said ‘no we’ve never dried anything in there!’ ‘Ach don’t go backing her up‘ My brother said it would be a daft place to dry washing and we’d only been in the house a month so I wanted to show it all off. She was really angry and adamant and said she was ready to slap me!

She has done this kind of thing before though. She went to see Titanic before me and told me sorry but maintains I went before her. I also said be of my friends ha a new girlfriend called Miriam she said I told her she was calked Vanessa and was adamant. She also bought me dishwasher tablets when I got them my new flat before the house ‘you said you had a dishwasher!’ 3 people told her that I had said no when she asked but she still maintains I told her I did. She actually just invents things and then believes them!

People get confused and mix people up, but once you've got an idea in your head it's very very difficult to let go of it!

I went on a night out with Friend A. Friend B was going to come but pulled out at the last minute. I had a 'clothing issue' during the night out, witnessed by Friend A, and we both told Friend B about it on our return.

Friend B now maintains that she was there when it happened, and tells the story to others as if she witnessed it. She most adamantly was NOT there, and both Friend A and I are baffled as to why she thinks she was.

But it's probably because she was supposed to be there, she wanted to be there and we told her the story a few times, so she's reordered her memories to put herself where she felt she should have been.

Someone asked me for a light once. Told them I didn't smoke. She was adamant I did and she'd seen me loads of times. I've never smoked in my life. Haha

I forgot another one: a friend is convinced she was with me the night I met DP. She 100% wasn't but she was there when I met my ex. She has completely confused the two of them. They look very different and the nights concerned were years apart!

Someone I used to go to school with and met up with about 20 years later asked me how I’d got rid of all the warts on my hands.
I’ve never had a wart in my life! But she wouldn’t have it and totally didn’t believe that she’d got me mixed up with someone else 😂

I have the opposite - I can very clearly picture a particular friend in the theatre when I went for my 40th, sitting to my left. Thing is, I know it isn’t true as she was giving birth at the time and quite obviously couldn’t come! I have never tried to convince her she was there though 😆

One of my best friends maintains that we nearly weren’t friends at all because she thought I was a fusspot- apparently we went to Nando’s and I complained that I wouldn’t like the veggie burger as it was described as spicy on the menu, so we had to go somewhere else to eat.

I didn’t set foot in a Nando’s until several years after we left uni. This incident never happened, but she is adamant that it did 🤷🏻‍♀️

Place marking. I love memory/false memory threads

one sister talks about when i was ‘morbidly obese’. i’m 5,6 & never weighed more than 60kg.

Another sister talks about ‘all those years i has terrible acne’. i didn’t even have teenage spots

I’ve given up correcting them

This is so strange... I am adamant my sister came with me to watch the hobbit at the cinema! She’s adamant she didn’t.. but I can remember going and buying snacks and everything with her and her being told off for using her phone half way through! I really vividly see it as her! I think she’s the wrong one and forgetting she came (I hope)

Not that people have of me but i have a false memory

I used to stay at my dad's on the weekends. One of these weekends my mum and my step dad had a fight and she tried stabbing him. I 100% wasnt there but whenever the story is mentioned i always remember being there and witnessing it

I assume its because it was spoke about so much by my siblings at the time that I imagined it in my head and the scenes stuck

I have false memories around the Sept 11 attacks. I was in New York and flew home from there a few days later. I spoke to so many people in the hostel where I was staying, plus on the plane home everyone was telling their stories of what they saw, that I genuinely don't know what I did and what I saw on that day, I just can't seperate it from the stories other people told me. Some things I objectively know didn't happen to me but it feels like it did. It's really strange but I read somewhere that it isn't that unusual to have false memories, especially in traumatic events.

Pretty much every memory my mum used to have of me was false. DP didn't believe me when he first met her, but then, in time when she started doing it to him, he had to admit it.
Her best one, she told pretty much everyone this, was that I went to Reading Festival, for the whole weekend, without a sleeping bag or a tent "and she never told me where she slept" (in my sleeping bag in my tent)

I love stuff like this

Interesting to think that it’s pretty much certain that some of the posters on here are the ones with the false memory and don’t know it

A couple of friends regularly recount stories from our school days with "you remember when".... Thing is I went to a totally different secondary school (I definitely did I have the certificates to prove it!)

When I say "no I don't remember" they still don't twig 😂 I have to remind them I wasn't at school.
I've known them for years and they have implemented me into their memories.

BillMasen I'm fairly sure I have a few false memories myself. I 'recall' a midwife saying some terrible things to me when I was in labour with DD but DP maintains it didn't happen.

My mum told DS it was really hard to get me to school on time when I was little because I was watching kids tv.

Except kids tv didn't come on until the afternoons when I was a kid.

Oh I mix people up terribly. I have claimed to know people I don't and not worked with people when I have and so on.