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!

My dad.
He is insistent that my eldest DD was on a family summer holiday in 1999, eclipse year.
No, DS was and was about 3.
DD hadn't yet been conceived yet, let alone born, birthday is end of July 2000.

But he insists they were there, then when you correct him a bit more forcibly, he moves the year we away, which is impossible as we only went to this place because of the sodding eclipse!

Somebody I know from way back absolutely insisted I held her baby when she came in for a visit to a support group that we both attended at the time.

I didnt. I wasnt even there on that day and I know I wasnt.

She got quite arsy with me in the end and upset so now when I see her I just agree I was there but she even told me what I was wearing and the conversation we had.

Weird.

My mum is adamant that I was in tears for days after Take That split up in the 90s and that she even phoned the helpline for advice because I was refusing to eat. Total nonsense. I just roll my eyes when she tells the tale now, no point arguing with her.

I was once involved in an incident on a bus. My mum is convinced this occurred when I was 17; it didn't, it happened when I was 14.

But she will not accept it otherwise. She's even created supporting evidence that I was definately older.

I'm also in the position of people believing I have a false memory regarding my Fil. He doesn't eat red meat, yet I know he once ordered a lamb dish when we were all dining abroad. I even remember my mil being really confused about it and asking him if he was sure that was what he wanted.

My dh is convinced this never happened, but I can remember the event down to really tiny odd details.

I used to come across a lady locally whe I was out and about who used to insist on calling me "Robyn" and asking how my Mother was.
Despite me telling her that my name wasn't Robyn and that my Mum had been dead for a while and I had no idea who she was, and she must have mistaken me for someone else, she insisted that I was indeed Robyn.
After about the third time we had such an encounter I took something from my handbag with my name on it to try and prove her wrong, it didn't work I was "joking with her".
It got to the stage where if I saw her approaching me I would cross the road or go off in a different direction.

When I was at my 20 year school reunion one of my school friends was talking about something that a group of us did in 2nd year. I wasn't there, I had changed to this school after 4th year but she remembered me being there the whole way through secondary school.

My best friend loves to talk about how I ate raw mushrooms while we were at school. I’ve never eaten mushrooms- I don’t like the texture. I loved a lot of raw veg, cauliflower in particular, but not mushroom. Whenever we go out it comes up in conversation and she just won’t have it!

I’m completely convinced that there was a stairlift at my grandma’s house. I can remember me and my brother having a go on it and falling over the damn thing. I asked my mum not so long back if they’d sold it when she died or if it was rented. Apparently there never was a stairlift! It’s such a vivid memory for me, but as nobody else in my family confirms it (and there’s no reason to lie, AND the house is still in the family and I’ve checked for holes) I can only assume it’s a false memory.

Is it possible you went on a stairlift once somewhere else?

It's not really the same thing and quite the opposite but I have an eidetic memory and can vividly remembers instances others can't recall, brings for a very awkward conversation.

These threads are fascinating but also frustrate me a bit because I feel bad for the posters who aren’t believed when they correct the false memories! Altho as said upthread, some posters on here will actually be the ones with the false memories despite thinking otherwise.

I used to think I had the most amazing memory but after learning about false memories I’ve realised I am probably misremembering a lot of things!

DH was convinced that I got pregnant the day he came home from a racing trip and shagged me in the back room of the club we worked at. The dates don't add up, but we never shagged in the back room. I gave him a blowie by the snooker table, but we never shagged.

Well, perhaps not that interesting but... I remember telling my dad that my friend's nickname was 'Carol more meat' because she used to chant it at the table during meals.

"No" He said,"That was you". Err I seriously doubt that as I really didn't like meat, but had to eat it!

I went to an all girls school. I use a wheelchair and there was another girl in my year who used one. We were often forced together as then one person could support us both.
We looked nothing alike and still don’t but for the first year or two had the same model wheelchair. Even they looked very different, mine was green, hers red and covered in stickers.

I still live in the town where we went to school, she lives about 8 miles away. Once a year or so I’ll bump into someone from school who reminisces about something they did and won’t be told it wasn’t me. I also get “I always see you in (other place)”

When dc1 was just 3 years old she swallowed a 2p. She is absolutely adamant that at the time it happened I was pegging washing out in the line.

I wasn't, I was sat about 6ft away from her in the living room feeding her baby sister, that's why I couldn't get to her in time to stop it happening. She also describes it as a long line, which we didn't have at the time, we still had a rotary. She's convinced though, in her head that's exactly what happened.

My 5 year old has a false memory and gets totally irate if anyone tries to correct him. He broke his arm when he was 1 and a half and had a cast on. He swears the cast fell off at his granny’s house but actually the wee skitter pulled his arm out of it at our house one night when he was sat watching the clangers on the telly. He gets really pissed off if I try to correct him that he actually pulled it off!

Not so much "about me" but "of mine":

When I was a teen, my mum had a rather major accident. I remember this as her being in intensive care for two weeks and in hospital for an eternity afterwards, me being utterly overwhelmed home alone with a little sibling and not having the first clue how I would cope if mum died.

What actually happened - as born out by hospital records - was:

• I was 17, so nearly an adult, and my sibling also a teen
• Mum was only in the ICU forna day - and mostly for monitoring and management due to the medication she was on rather than any imminent threat of death
• We weren't alone at all - on of my mum's friends came to check on us several times a day
• Mum was actually released from hospital after a week

Still, even though I know this is what actually happened, my false memory feels more real and intense than many memories of mine I know are entirely accurate.

I suspect that what I'm actually remembering is my emotional truth at the time - and that my brain has spun an "appropriate to the emotional response" setting to match it.

Hellbentwellwent Your DS is amazing to remember having the cast at 1.5 years old. My DS broke his femur in a dramatic accident abroad when he was 3.5 and has absolutely no memory of it at all. I have to show him photos of him in his massive cast to prove it. Yet the whole thing was so traumatic at the time.

I have an incredibly vivid memory of climbing the stairs in my childhood family home, turning right into the spare bedroom to see my mum sitting in the bed with my baby sister. Except I was the baby sister, so in my memory, I'm somehow inhabiting my older brother's consciousness.

I think stems from a really vivid dream, but although I know it's false, because I am in it as the wrong person, I would be really hard to convince had there been any possibility that I was right. I have quite a good memory generally, but knowing that this false recollection is lurking there in my mind does make me question myself sometimes!

Our vet always thinks I have a dog! We don't, just 2 cats, and he never asks DH about the dog if he takes one of the cats for an appointment. If I go he always asks after the dog. I always laugh and say oh no that's not me but the next time I go he'll ask how the dog is again. I even asked my sister if she uses the same vet in case he was confusing us (we're not that alike though!) but she doesn't so I must have a local lookalike

I find this really interesting. I have a few, both “mine” and about me.

I have a really strong memory of watching a particular TV event in my grandmother’s house. I can picture exactly where I was, sitting on the carpet in her living room, with dad and gran also there. It is so vivid and feels real, except, gran moved into sheltered housing 3 years before this event took place. It is possible that I still watched the event with her and my brain has transposed the setting, or maybe she wasn’t there at all. Very odd.

When I was younger, I was part of a group of 5 friends who went out together every Saturday night without fail. There was a bit of a disagreement at one point which led to two of the group going on holiday together which pissed off the rest of us so we decided to have a really epic night out without them. During this night out an incredibly specific thing happened to me as a result of mistaken identity (a very funny thing, not traumatic as I realise this might imply). Our friendship group got back together and this story has been told many times, except now one of the two who was on holiday is convinced that not only were we all there when it happened, but that the incident actually happened to her. Even now, 25 years on, most of us are still in contact and she tells this story regularly to others – her dad even told the story during his father-of-the-bride speech at her wedding and it has passed into legend amongst her friends and family. I would doubt myself but the other two friends who were actually on the night out agree with me that she wasn’t even in the country at the time and that the incident happened to me but it has gone on for so long that we all now just agree with her. I genuinely don’t think she “stole” the story in a malicious way. She really seems to believe without a doubt that this thing happened to her.

On the subject of weddings, a few friends and I share a memory of a mutual friend lusting after the bridesmaid and making a fool of himself at another friends wedding. Said friend was in Australia at the time. it's strange that we all share the same memory but I assume that we must have said something at the time like "if Dave were here he'd be trying to chat her up" and it has stuck with all of us.

On a different note – I’ve written about this one on MN before – my entire family have a false belief that I screwed up my uni degree and/or dropped out. I studied Modern Languages and this included a year abroad. I was very nervous going to make a temporary life in a new country where I knew no-one and it is true that in the first couple of weeks I was quite homesick and dealing with culture shock and I cried on the phone to my mum a few times. A couple of years before I did my year abroad, the daughter of my parents’ friends had done similar and couldn’t settle in the country at all, to the point where she had a breakdown and the parents had to fly across to physically bring her home. I know my mum was worried about the same thing happening to me but thing did start falling into place for me, I made friends and grew to feel completely at home in this other country and city, so much so that I considered dropping out of uni to stay there permanently. Eventually I was persuaded by my tutors to take an interruption of study for a year, thus extending my stay to two years but then coming back to do the final year. I did this and had plans to then return to the other country to live and work after graduation but, having now ended up in a new uni cohort, I ended up meeting my now-DH and decided to stay in the UK with him after graduating – although we have always visited my “second home” regularly because I still have a deep love for the place. This reality has been twisted in the heads of my parents and siblings (I genuinely don’t know where it started but the belief has spread and taken hold like a weed) and more distant family members so people think various combinations of the following (a) hated my time abroad and cut it short because I was homesick, (b) dropped out of uni – with a follow on false memory that I was struggling and the year abroad proved to me that I couldn’t speak the language very well, (c) returned to uni but failed my finals (I got a 2:1). No matter how many times I point out that my stay was extended and question why I would keep going back to that place, they are adamant that I screwed up my year abroad and then the rest of my degree. They've obviously confused what happened to the friend, plus the fact that I considered dropping out AND then the fact that I didn't return as planned but they are so sure of their version of events that it has now become the family's shameful secret and I'm constantly being told not to worry about happened in the past and at least I tried....

Cognitive dissonance is very very powerful and explains why people just cannot believe the truth of events, even when corrected with dates, photographs and other witnesses. The brain is very very fallible.

And children, particularly, can have dreams that they are unable to tell from real life. I have one child who swears that she once saw something in our house. I distinctly remember her telling me about the dream that she had, the following morning. She believes the thing she saw was real - but I know it was a dream.

Possible, but the memory I have is definitely my grandma’s house.

@Chochito I have watched too many of those 'identical twins separated at birth then found each other in the same city they both moved' to documentaries to think that this can be anything but that!

Having moved to my current location a bit over 7 yrs ago, I noticed a staff member at the supermarket giving me strange looks, but didn't know why. Each fortnight when I was in the store she acted very strange, would drop her head and peer at me from underneath her eyebrows then turn her head as I walked past. She was becoming really creepy then one day she stood in front of me so we were now face-to-face and asked why I was ignoring her as during our school years we were best friends and did 'everything' together. Huh????

I said, sorry but you've got me mixed up with someone else because I've only moved to the area a couple of months ago and didn't go to school here and have never seen you before. I thought she would have just said something like 'sorry I must have been thinking about someone else' but no...she turned even nastier and started calling me horrible names because I had turned my back on her when I used to spend so much time at her parents' house during school and now they would be extremely disappointed in me because they thought I was a nice person!! Also she had done 'so much' for me and stood by me when I needed her!!

She calls me by another christian name and I said that's not my name...she asked when, and why, I changed it. Then I asked her name and she wouldn't tell me, just that I should 'know' her name because we were such good friends and spent so much time together but after I moved to the city to work she hadn't seen me for a long time. I have 'never' lived in the city but no way can I convince her...she even names the company where I was working (in the city) and I've 'never' worked there either.

To say this is OTT is an understatement, she will NOT let it drop, no matter what I say or do and her workmates started asking me why I wouldn't go to her house to have coffee as she invited? I now do my shopping at another supermarket even though it's further away and therefore more inconvenient for me, just to get away from her because there is NO convincing her she's got the wrong person and she was making a huge scene in the store in front of customers and staff and embarrassing me.

Naturally, in her opinion, I'm acting strange and not wanting to be sociable...why would I? She's creepy!!

A friend at school once insisted that she had met my uncle and he was a Wizard

Not too sure if she misheard me saying he was West Indian when she asked about his heritage. But she insisted she didn’t

I heard from someone I worked with that another woman said I hated her and had a vendetta against her.

I would have asked her why she had said such a thing but I didn’t know her, had never spoken to her and our paths I didn’t see how they could have possibly crossed

Dp is hilarious in the things he remembers.

He is absolutely convinced he collected the children every afternoon from school and took them to Sainsbury’s for their tea.

He didn’t even know which school they went to, he was away 2 weeks in every month and the only time he went to a school play he got a taxi from the station after work and went to the wrong school.

He “remembers” a lot of stuff about me and describes in great detail to the children what I got up to before they were born. Or about their early life.

None of which is true and doesn’t configure with who I am or their ages.

He apparently took them loads of places before they were born,