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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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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:

BaronessBomburst · 28/01/2018 11:24

DS randomly started telling me about being born. He was about four at the time. He just started describing dark then light, and saying that he could feel his head being squashed in the darkest bit.

We don't watch OBEM, he has no siblings, and I'm certainly not a baby/ talk about birth kind of person, so if it wasn't a memory I have no idea where he could have got it from. On the other hand, I do find a memory of being born a bit odd.

sixteenapples · 28/01/2018 11:26

In childhood we are happier blending "real" and "not real" - the distinction is not very important. As we grow older it becomes practical to distinguish. This is when we try to establish which of our memories are true and which false. As we age, the boundaries blur again.

Dementia is, whilst heartbreaking and horrible, interesting insofar as what it does to memory. It is not simply forgetfulness. In some cases the mind almost turns in on itself and each memory is a product of a previous one. Nothing is "real" - and yet it is its own reality. It is in fact by the end stages the only reality.

(Currently dealing with this with a parent)

x2boys · 28/01/2018 11:26

I have very distinct memories from childhood but I think some might have been what my mum told me happened and I think I remember it? I have a memory of going to a funeral and my grandad was there I would have been about 5 maybe ? My mum says I never went to a funeral (untill I was much older) I also remember playing with a babies bottle when I was about 3or 4 it was probably my old one it was glass though ,did bottles used to be glass ? It would have been the early 70,,s.

Alisvolatpropiis · 28/01/2018 11:29

My brother is 8 years younger than me, early 20’s. He is adamant and has been for about 4 years that when he was about 5/6 I offered him 50p to eat cat food.

This categorically did not happen and yet he insists

FairyLights56 · 28/01/2018 11:33

When I was in year 5 or 6, there was a girl I didn't get on with.

I'd started biting my nails, and I told them it was because this girl was bullying me. I said that she'd threatened to punch me. At the time, I believed she had said it.

Now that I'm looking back, I'm starting to wonder whether that was an invented memory. I'm not sure she ever did threaten me, because when I think of that "moment" it seems very much that she's speaking my words.

sixteenapples · 28/01/2018 11:43

I had an embarrassing experience recently at a meet up of old friends - telling a story that I remembered - and it wasn't true - I was reminded that wasn't there! Over 30 years stories get mixed and told and re-told. Now with images and online media sometimes I feel as if I have participated in something that I actually haven't!

scrivette · 28/01/2018 12:05

I had a dream when I was 3 that was so vivid I thought it was real. When I mentioned what had happened a few days later my parents told me that it wasn't real and must have been a dream.

I still vividly remember this dream as well as I remember being told it wasn't real.

sleepyhead · 28/01/2018 12:16

I clearly remember going with my dad to bring my mum and new baby brother home from hospital. It's one of my most vivid early memories.

Except it didn't happen. I stayed at home with my gran, my mum didn't get the green dress I remember her wearing for another couple of years, the features I remember about the hospital bear no resemblance to where my brother was born.

DaphneCanDoBetterThanFred · 28/01/2018 12:29

When I was about 5 or 6 I remember seeing a tiny woman on a tiny moped riding down our road. She would have been about maybe 2feet tall, and her moped equally small. I remember asking my mum what had happened to her, and being told that the woman had been struck by lightning and shrunk. I saw her multiple times, until we moved out of the area.

My mum, unsurprisingly, remembers nothing of either the woman or the conversation

I have very few memories of my childhood, the odd flash here and there, and things my friends remember from when I was a teenager, I have absolutely no memory of. I'm also a bit sketchy about things that happened in my 20s I often wonder if my brain is a bit broken.

FineSally · 28/01/2018 12:41

I have a memory about moving house. My baby sister was in a pram, one of those large coach-built Silver Cross ones. I had a pram seat that went over the bottom part. This sort of thing, except that mine was cream.

But on this occasion I had to walk because there was a round goldfish bowl in the pram. Given the likely date I must have been almost 3.
My mum stoutly denies this ever happened. it was 60 years ago so perhaps her memory has faded more than mine. She denies ever having a goldfish! Could I have imagined it?

swampster · 28/01/2018 12:43

Forever Autumn has been around a while, @Hassled. First in 1969 as Lego commercial, again in 1972, before the uber-popular Justin Hayward version. So perhaps your memory is real? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_Autumn_(song)

swampster · 28/01/2018 12:47

If you were in Japan in 1972, Forever Autumn was No.2 in the charts.

IHeartKingThistle · 28/01/2018 12:53

I was talking to my mum the other day about when I was a kid and a giant queen wasp was in my bedroom and I was so terrified I had to hide under the covers and it took ages for anyone to come.

Apparently I had the flu, with a really high temperature, and when my mum came to check on me I was hallucinating and screamed because I thought she was a giant wasp.

But I remember the wasp!

DogsDoodahs · 28/01/2018 12:57

I distinctly remember being in a shop with my mum, sitting in a pushchair with one of those chalk lollies. I wondered if I could open my mouth wide enough to get it in past my teeth. Turns out that with a bit of jaw ache and pushing I could but then, predictably I couldn’t get it out again.
I remember a brief moment of panic and making muffled “Nnnng nnnnng uh” noises and frantically signalling to my mum who was yakking away to the shop lady.

I also remember feeling surprised and slightly put out that my normally excessively kind and loving mum seemed rather exasperated and not as sympathetic as I was used to.
Thinking back she was probably embarrassed.

AlwaysPondering · 28/01/2018 13:14

For years I believed that my parents punished me by making me sit in a bath full of baked beans.

It wasn't until I was a teenager that I realised there was no way my parents or anyone would waste that many cans of beans!

So OP, it could be true, but equally it may not be.

Brokenbiscuit · 28/01/2018 13:20

My 12yo dd remembers a number of very specific things from a very early age that I haven't told her, and nobody else could have told her either. There are no photos or other things which could have put these memories into her mind.

I was taken aback when I realised that she remembered stuff from when she was very, very tiny, as my own meteorites from that age are incredibly limited. However, I don't doubt that the memories are real ones, and yours may be real too, OP.

Brokenbiscuit · 28/01/2018 13:20

Meteorites?! Memories...

marcopront · 28/01/2018 14:09

When I was 2 I fell downstairs and broke my leg.
I can describe the incident in great detail: what I was wearing, what my siblings were watching on TV, what my Mum was cooking for tea, all the neighbours who were involved in helping. However the details of how I fell are missing, if I picture it, I picture it in the wrong house.
My memory is just what I have been told.

lemony7 · 28/01/2018 14:30

Mandela effect. That could explain some of these memories with no validation: they did happen just as you remember them, but in another timeline/dimension.

Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies · 28/01/2018 14:36

I have an absolutely clear memory. Going down the steps to a cellar in my grandmother's house there was a door-shaped alcove - she used it to keep brooms in. Before this it had been a doorway into an office used by my grandfather. He'd died before I was born, and all his paperwork was still in the office. It was bricked up at some point - I never knew why. My brother also remembers this.

Thing is, although the alcove was always there, the room simply couldn't have existed - it would have entered the staircase in the wall behind it. I've got no idea why I have such a strong memory of a non-existent room.

Memories aren't always reliable.

DogsDoodahs · 28/01/2018 14:54

Ooh I’ve thought of a false memory I had!

I was convinced - I mean I’d have bet my house and children on it - that something in Stephen King’s “The Stand” mentioned that the plague immune people were immune because they’d been bitten by a snake at some point in their lives.

Turns out that’s not the case and I’d read that in another book.

Stiddleficks · 28/01/2018 15:01

I can remember clear as day when my grandma died at our house, me and my dps lived with my dgps, she had terminal cancer and was nursed at home til the end. I remember the doctor arriving and an ambulance coming and carrying her down the stairs in a red blanket. Thing is I was taken to my aunts house as soon as they knew she was at the end and wasn’t there to see any one arrive, there was no ambulance just the undertakers. I can only assume my memories are me imagining what would have happened or having seen something on tv that was similar circumstances. I was 5 at the time and over 30 years later it still feels real to me.

GrouchyKiwi · 28/01/2018 15:05

I have a vivid memory of flying from a small hill in my parents' backyard to the front door when I was about 6. I had tied a toy blanket around my shoulders like a cape, and I can still feel the wind on my face as I flew.

I have some memories from when I was 2 but I'm never certain whether they're real or just constructed from photos and my parents' words. They were things like having a wasp stuck in my hair and the day we got our new puppy.

treeofhearts · 28/01/2018 15:09

Youngmystery It was! I remember the scene you're talking about. I think it was early season 4 if I have it in the right context. I'll look for it later and tell you if I find it. I have them all so it won't take long.

EmmaGrundyForPM · 28/01/2018 15:34

I have a crystal clear memory of being at my grandmothers house and watching the Bradford football disaster on tv. I remember the flames, and my grandmother - who never swore - saying "oh dear Lord, those poor people".

It was only years later that I read an article which mentioned the disaster and I realised it had happened several years after my grandmother died. I'm presumably conflating two different events and my grandmother was actually commenting on a different, earlier disaster.

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