Hello Teacher!
Nice castle you have here.
I had a house warming gift for you, but.....it fell apart while i was 'wrapping' it for you. :^(
Anyway, on topic.
It is a wonder how even at such a tender age, it seems we have the FREEDOM of choice to carry in our memory, or would it be our hearts, the records of our history. If your Father had not returned this to you, it would have stayed a buried .....treasure?
O.K then,...catch you on the flip side!
Dougman,
Thanks for reading the story. Yeah, I'm wondering if the trauma had forced me to highlight the good part of the evening and push the scary part into the background. So under the good memory lies a nasty little tale.
*
It was a great post written with a deep psychological insight. Thank you for letting us know about it. It teach us how "screen memory" function. Take care. Sami.
I have quite a few vivid memories from when I was two and three years old. I have a hypothesis that early memory is aided if one moves regularly (every four years or so) but not *too* regularly (once a year). I remember the first time I saw the moon. The names of the kids on my street. The first time I heard of "the boogeyman". My first spanking. The first time I saw a black child (she lived six houses down and came to the door when I was trick-or-treating). She must have been six or seven, and so was not among my peers; and of course there were no black people in kids' TV shows in the 60s.
I remember my first nemisis, "Kenny". He was a bully who lived next door who was a year older than me. But unfortunately for him my four/five year old brother was a year older *him*. After he split open my head with a toy gun, he ran for his house, but my brother caught him on his front porch, and I remember my him pounding Kenny to dust as his mother looked on behind the screen door in horror. It seems odd to me to have had a nemisis so young, but my friend Cliffy (who was 6 months younger than me) and his older sister also had nemises: the boys across the street, whose last name were "Black" and had a large assortment of wild pets (frogs, turtles, spiders, an alligator, etc.) and an above ground pool. There was also that red-haired girl, Carol, that we weren't too keen on and those big five or six year old brothers whose names seem to have faded from my memory (but I remember knowing their names once). Wow! There sure were lot of intercine politics on Massachusets St.
Not one of these memories occurred before my fourth birthday, because we moved away a couple months before that. But how can I know if I remember these things or remember them accurately?
You're right about the "pinning" effect of moves on memory identification. I can remember a few scenes from a house we lived in only while I was 2-4 years old, and making multiple visits with my mother to watch our next house get finished in a nearby development. And a few scenes involving a girl next door, notably one when she walked across some anthills in a nearby lot and was suddenly covered in biting ants, and her frantic parents brushing them off her as fast as they could. Etc.
Sami,
Thanks. I had no idea about "screen memories" until Laura over at your blog, a psychologist who had written her Master's thesis on that subject, pointed out that my story fits that definition perfectly. I will have to re-write the conclusion to include discovering what a "screen memory" is and maybe expand it a bit to discuss the idea of "screen memories."
CMAR II,
You remember the first time you saw the moon?! That's amazing. I think you might be right about that relocating when you're young might help fix memories.
Brian H,
I don't think I'd forget a swarm of biting ants either. Does anyone remember a Twilight Zone episode where these ants attack a town? I can still see the terrified occupants of a car along the highway as the ants worked their way inside.
*
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