Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think this is a real memory?

81 replies

kokosnuss · 26/01/2018 23:01

I have always had a very early memory that feels real to me, but my Mum says it must have been a dream, imagined, or similar, as she never heard about it.

The memory is that I knocked over a cup of tea at nursery, and it scalded a girl, who was taken to hospital in a yellow blanket. The girl in the memory is a real girl who went to my nursery. Something about the vividness of the memory, and distinctly remembering the yellow blanket, and exactly how it looked, really makes me think it was real.

I can well imagine that in the panic of having left hot tea around pre-school kids, and a child being hurt, you wouldn't care which child knocked it over, and so it's entirely reasonable my Mum would never have even heard about it?

But I'm not sure. What do you think?

OP posts:
MrsDc7 · 26/01/2018 23:04

I'm watching the responses to this with interest. I have a horrible memory from being a young child that feels incredibly vivid and real and I've carried it with me ever since. I do sometimes wonder if it was a dream though. It's very distressing not knowing

Ariela · 26/01/2018 23:08

In those days it's unlikely that there was the reporting of incidents - basic common sense rather than a written H&S policy was the norm.

So it may well have happened - or was it something you saw on TV?

JeReviens · 26/01/2018 23:08

I don't know. My now adult son has claimed from a very early age that he remembers the fire and fire engines at our old flat. Never happened but he's so clear about it from how many firemen to how bad the water damage was afterwards.

Julie8008 · 26/01/2018 23:10

Its normal to remember things that happened to others as if they happened to you, over long periods of time (especially as a child).

TheSmallClangerWhistlesAgain · 26/01/2018 23:13

I think we can mix real memories together in our minds to create something that didn't quite happen how we thought it did. The tea spilling and the girl being taken to hospital in the yellow blanket might have been separate incidents that you've somehow got confused. Or it might have happened - if the teacher was at fault, it probably wouldn't have got back to your parents.

Peachyking000 · 26/01/2018 23:16

I have a couple of very clear memories from when I was young - one was being brought to a local swimming pool to watch a dolphin show. Every time I mentioned it to my parents/siblings/peers they all laughed and said it must have been a dream as none of them remembered it and that they could t have real dolphins in a swimming pool.

Except a couple of years ago that swimming pool closed down, and there was an article in the news about the dolphin show in the early 80’s!

Lilyhatesjaz · 26/01/2018 23:17

I told my class at school about seeing a space ship landing in the sea near where we lived I had confused watching it on TV with my Dad telling me it would land in the sea and assumed it landed near my home.

idontlikealdi · 26/01/2018 23:18

I think memories are so fluid - influenced by something you heard, a picture you’ve seen, something you’ve dreamt, something you were present for, that it’s really hard to determine real memories from an early age.

I have a distinct memory from the fort day of primary involving a purple paddling pool and plastic ducks. I 100% remember it but no one else does so there’s no validation.

BigBaboonBum · 26/01/2018 23:18

My eldest son remembers nursery, he remembers things from when he was very young (1-2) like when we had our white rabbit and the house we lived in briefly (no photos of either). He also recalls specific things from when he first did things like squiggle on a piece of paper and how happy I was with him and says how happy it made him feel etc etc. He has a lot of stories like this, some I have to really think about to remember and I just wonder... how do you remember this?!. His long term memory is great but his short term memory isn’t the best 🤔

Tipsntoes · 26/01/2018 23:24

If it was an accident, why would it have been reported to your mum?

Although how old are you? Hot drinks haven't been allowed in nurseries for decades, so there would/should have been some sort of enquiry if the child needed hospital treatment.

Original poster
kokosnuss · 26/01/2018 23:25

Indeed, I have wondered if I’ve maybe merged together fragments of different memories. For example, is a cup of tea really that hot once you put the milk in? It’s hot but might not scald seriously enough to need medical attention? Then again, it being a young child in their care they might have wanted to be safe not sorry...

OP posts:
Original poster
kokosnuss · 26/01/2018 23:26

(This would have been early 90s)

OP posts:
Witchend · 26/01/2018 23:32

It could be as simple as you knocked over a drink and she was taken as an unrelated incident to hospital, and you thought you'd caused it.
Or you mixed two different situations.

An example how we can mix memories was a book I remember from the teacher reading at primary.
I remembered the basic plot and one scene vividly, down to precise words.
I asked on here if anyone knew the book and people came up with two possibilities. So I bought them both. The basic plot was one book and the scene was from the other.
I am fairly certain the plot was the one the teacher read, and the one with the scene I read myself (I'm certain the teacher didn't read both). But when I read the scene, I can hear the teacher's voice, see myself sitting at the desk, head on my arms smelling the varnish on the desk...

Awwlookatmybabyspider · 26/01/2018 23:34

My dd swears David Tennant came into her school and gave a talk on Doctor Who. She even remembers her friend asking him a question.
Apparently though it never happened and no one else has any recollection of it at all.

worriedaboutchristmas · 26/01/2018 23:35

I have a very good memory. Distinctly remember most of my childhood . Except recently, we've found out I don't. I remember childhood but I remember 3 childhoods. My brother and sister agreed that I had done x. They remembered me doing it. I did too. And with no parent to tell us otherwise that was that. Turns out that I remember their childhoods and mine but it all merged into one and I spent a long long long time telling the stories as all my own.

Then our mother came back. With photos. Memory is a weird, malleable, changeable and manipulative thing. Amazing really

monkeysee100 · 28/01/2018 09:29

I always remembered a cartoon clay animation thing which featured people sobbing over coffins then an earthquake where people fell through the earth. Finally this year I found this: m.youtube.com/watch?v=i52iooE2nVI

It was bloody real and horrifying!!

ghostyslovesheets · 28/01/2018 10:16

Regarding dolphin shows at swimming pools - my mums diary from the mid 70’s has us and our gang of mums/kids attending one at our salt water baths - definitely a thing years ago

I don’t have any controversial memories but my earliest one is being about 2 and putting my mouth on the front of the pushchair (metal with yellow and red beads) and making a humming noise as we went over the cobblestone our side the fire station!

Hassled · 28/01/2018 10:31

I think it's very common to merge memories. I have a very clear and distinct "memory" of my mother and I driving to the shop that sold my school uniform in her Fiat Bambino listening to Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward. Years later I worked out that song was released a couple of years after we'd moved from that country - it just couldn't have happened. I think I remember the trip, and I remember the song, and somehow have merged the two.

user1485182339 · 28/01/2018 10:37

I have liked reading these memories that are and are not real. Smile It's kinda human. Thanks for sharing.

CrazyExIngenue · 28/01/2018 10:51

My DP's and DB were shocked when I admitted about 10 years ago that the reason my then 1 year old brother fell onto a space heater was because I (at 3 years old) pushed him. I clearly remember it and thought everyone knew. (To be fair 3 year old pushing little brother pales in comparison to exposed space heater, but it was 1984).

Youngmystery · 28/01/2018 11:01

False memories happen easily, it's a big problem for police at crime scenes.

I have what I can only assume is one as no one has been able to tell me I'm right. I used to have a repetitive nightmare about a girl dying after she sees blood come out of a tap, which only started after I watched the start of an episode of what I think was x files on TV. They are in a city in a square and in the middle of the square there is a drinking fountain which when they switch it on blood came out.

But no one has been able to find this episode of the x files. So I can only assume I made it up (why?) or it was a different TV program. May not have been the start of the episode but i think it was. I stopped having the nightmare thankfully but still remember it, I had it so many times.

monkeysee100 · 28/01/2018 11:04

The blood out of the tap soundsjme the original IT

Youngmystery · 28/01/2018 11:12

monkey I've not seen the original It to my recollection, and I was about 3/4 at the time. But it's possible, I have seen the new one, but it didn't have this scene. It was definitely two adults at the tap in the square, both dressed in black.

Abracadabraapileofbollocks · 28/01/2018 11:15

Dark City. Those in control are changing your memories.

JustVent · 28/01/2018 11:16

I swear I remember being in a Moses basket and being bought downstairs as a baby.

It was a very really memory for me. When I told my mum, she asked me to describe the house and it wasn’t the house that I would have been in.
I do remember her telling me that when I was a baby and I cried she would bring me downstairs and go back up and sleep (nice 😮) so I guess that I imagined this happening and now it feels like a real memory.