memories that stick with you

[Potatosmileyfaces1]

What was a moment in your life that you feel was the most significant/you’ll never forget?

Mine was when I was about 5 and I was in a taxi with my family. I had been eating a hardboiled sweet- I think maybe a glacier mint as I think we got it after lunch with the bill but cant really remember tbh! My mum let me eat it as I had eaten them before however the taxi suddenly stopped and the sweet ended up down the back of my throat. It got completely stuck and I couldn’t breath or speak. I think my mum dislodged it by heimlich or similar, and all was fine in the end, but to this day I remember it so clearly and I will honestly never forget the feeling of trying to breath or scream and nothing coming out. That was almost 20 years ago and I still remember so clearly how terrifying it was! My poor mum got such a fright and needless to say I was never allowed another boiled sweet again!

Just thought I’d start a thread to talk about good or bad experiences that stuck with you forever! Basically the most significant episodes in our lives!

Totally pointless thread I know but just thought it could be interesting! Also I’m a regular poster but changed my name as I didn’t want to link to my previous threads

Probably my father threatening my mother sadly. He never actually hit her but he may as well have. Me and my siblings were screaming in terror and she was desperately trying to shush us as the neighbours would hear

NC with him now thankfully. I hope my DCs early memories are of something more pleasant.

A teacher humiliating me because i was poor and another teacher guiding and building my confidence.
In my 50s now and i will never forget the hostility/disgust in the eyes of one teacher and the warmth/encouragement of the other.

One of my memories was waking up and the gingerbread, carrots and sherry we'd left out for Santa was gone, most exciting thing ever.

I later learnt my dad sat there and chewed 9 carrot tops - washed down with the sherry - so I'd believe the reindeer had each had one. It makes me love this memory more as to the effort that was made to make Christmas a little magical.

There was an open day at school, all the parents were to come, and their kid would go off with them to show them around. Everyone went off with their parent, except me. Mum totally forgot about it. I could even see her from the class window, we lived that close. It was such an awful feeling . When I got home that afternoon, in years, she brushed it off like I was being a baby ( I was about 6). I've never forgotten how awful it was to be forgotten .

• I was in tears, not years .

About 7 or 8 years old playing with my best friend in my old house. We made a little den in the hot press cupboard (was quite big)i threw an old sheet over me pretending to be a ghost and making her laugh. Only I couldn't find my way back out of the sheet and panicked quite badly. I screamed bloody murder, couldn't control my breathing so started hyperventilating, tears and snot tripping me. I believe had my first panic attack. My friend eventually managed to free me but over 25 years later I am severely claustrophobic.

At primary school the teacher had set us a task and the 2 who finished first could go out to play 5 minutes early. It was me and another girl who “won” so off we went. We had the entire school field to ourselves and I was so excited and asked her what she wanted to play. She looked me up and down with disgust and said “what?? I’m not playing with you!”
She turned her back to me and just stood waiting for her friends to come out. I didn’t have any friends so just went to my usual tree and sat there.
Still sticks in my mind the level of disgust she showed me and the fact that she would rather play with nobody than play with me.

Not a very significant moment in my life. But I don't trust glacier mints! When I was very young we went to visit my granddad in hospital. I got bored and got talking to a lovely old lady in the same ward. She had glacier mints and let me have the rest of the bag. When we next went to the hospital I took a bag of sweets for the old lady. When we got there I was told she had died. In my young brain the glacier mint became the sweet of death. About 30 odd years later I still irrationally refuse to eat them.

I choked on a hardboiled sweet when I was quite little. I must have said something to my father. I had just managed to cough it up when my father picked me up by heels and shook me up and down like a yoyo in mid air. This meant I choked on the sweet again because obviously I was pretty disoriented. I ended up having to cough up the sweet again backing away from my father as fast as I could once he put me down. I guess the moral is never shake a choking child up and down like a yoyo.

I was a highly precocious reader (I was reading fluently by the age of 4 or so, mostly thanks to the efforts of my older sister and grandfather).

I had a vile teacher in Primary 4 (Scottish here, so around 6/7 - I was also very young for my school year), who refused to believe that I had read and understood the entirety of my reading book weeks ahead of the others, and accused me, in front of the rest of the class, of having cheated, in spite of my protestations.

She was a horrible woman who had no place dealing with young children.

I learned a few years ago that she died in a house fire about 10 years ago - would it be dreadful of me to say that I wasn't particularly sorry?

Yes it would.

My family mostly meant well but were very neglectful and there were drugs involved and stuff and I was a really troubled teen. I was 14 or so and remember taking myself off for my usual 4 am wander into the woods to watch the sun come up (I wasn’t in school) and being totally astounded by how beautiful the world was but also realising how alone I was in it. It was a feeling of vastness and possibility but also total isolation and it’s stuck with me forever. I feel I can do anything and go anywhere but will always be alone and mostly forgotten.