Remembering things

I can remember a monkey being put on my 3yr old son's shoulder by a photographer in a market in 1970s.
Poor lad . He was petrified!
I have the photo somewhere.

And now you mentioned it yes i can recall that fair & having pic taken , but wouldnt have instantly thought of it without the reminder maybe.

I blame Google and the ease of finding anything you need to know far faster than my brain works

Yearoff- yes i can remember having a pic taken at a fair with a monkey- he sat on my shoulder & he was wearing a red fez hat- they seemed to do those a lot in those days (late sixties i think maybe 1970?) I dont know what happened to photo though i never found it amongst her things when my mum died.

I told my daughter in law that I hadn’t seen a link to the house my daughter is thinking of buying and 10 minutes later had a flashback to a picture of the house and looking back I found the link. Embarrassing.

When my grandson asks me for the name of something, bird or plant or a synonym for instance, I often have to tell him to give me 10 minutes to open that particular file in my brain and it then usually pops into my head.

However I quickly put an inherited ring somewhere out of sight when I had workmen arrive last year and months later still haven’t been able to remember where I put it😢

Not just things but people. I have had people greet me as though they know me and I haven't the foggiest who they are. Even one chap who said he sat next to me in every English class at school. I didn't remember him at all but he knew a lot about me.

I can remember certain times from my childhood, it's as though my mind took a photo and I can look at it. If I try to recall other things such as potty training my two children or putting events that happened when we were first married in order, I have no clear memory. I think it's all quite normal really, it's been a long and eventful life.

My sister and I recall past memories in a totally different way.
Events we both attended are recalled differently I state the facts in bullet points my sister always recalls events as if our childhood was idyllic and we lived in a chocolate box cottage with roses round the door.
Talking to her the other day she was surprised when I said I had a photographic memory, I can see events in my mind like video clips. It helped tremendously when doing my nursing exams and for setting up trolleys when I worked in theatre.

I am so relieved to read this! I too have very little recollection of some events that happened involving family. It’s a very frustrating feeling.
I agree with your daughter MOnica
My theory is that as we get older our brains have so much information in them that they have to do a clean up every so often to make room for new events! Of course there’s no medical evidence to prove this is true.

I have an excellent memory for facts but I do fail to recall the odd word from time to time. Often I know the first letter of the word I want. Of course I can always summon up an alternative word or describe what I mean so I dont worry about it.

This kind of forgetting is called "Age related recall problem" and is a regretable fact of life when you are getting older. My grandmother still had a sharp memory into her 90s.

I have what is called "aphantasia" which means I can't see pictures in mind, this affects 1-3% of the population, one of my grandsons is the same. I have a wonderful memory which is of course different from imagery.

Yearoff - monkeygate ... I have that picture too. Me and a monkey!

🤔

I can remember things 30 or 40 years ago, but trying to remember what happened the day before yesterday…..
Long-term memory, brilliant, short-term memory, appalling

I find keeping a journal or diary very helpful. Especially the important dates,weddings, special birthdays, holidays etc. My husband did route66 a few years ago.he kept a journal all the time with photos,receipts, little anecdotes . If he hadn't he would have forgotten most of it . Then during lockdown he wrote a book about his trip. We can't all do that but a journal or a calendar with spaces to write dates will jog your memory.

There’s a photograph of myself and two school friends at a fair with a monkey on my shoulder. We would have been about 14-16. I would swear it never happened. None of us remember posing with this poor monkey for a picture. We didn’t drink or do drugs so it’s not that that has impaired our recollection. It has become quite the joke between us and us known a monkey gate. It’s quite disconcerting when, despite photographic evidence, the memory has nothing to offer!

God bless the low carb diet. I have never felt as fit as I do when I am on it. When I go on holiday and start to eat other foods such as pasta and pizzas and pies and cream I feel sluggish and tired but once back on the low carb diet, I bounce back and can also remember things, such as seeing my dad pushing my pushchair in the 1940's. Many people worry that not remembering recent things but remembering things that hapened years ago is a sign of dementia but I believe it is because, every day things are not as important as you get older, especially when you have lost someone close to you but remembering the things from our past is because we were happy.

DD has an appallig memory. She descibes it as a computer disk that delted everything on it every 5 years.

There are events involving her that we have recalled at various times over the years that in the early years she has remembered, but now 10-20 years later, despite the reinforcement of these recalls, she now has absolutely no memory.

In one case, we fall over backwards never to mention the event in her presence because it was something she did when she was about 12, which was very clever, very witty and rather naughty. She quite enjoyed the event being remembered because it was 'very clever, very witty and rather naughty'. She now has no memory of it, and it rather upsets her.

I do think ifyou have often retold a certain story that your version fixes itself in your mind. It may or may not be 100% accurate.

I can’t remember when I last saw or spoke to my mother before she died over twenty years ago. Yet, I can remember clearly when I last saw my father a few days before he died. I visited him in hospital and we joked about all the various devices he was wired up to. This was over forty years ago.
I’ve always been hopeless with names. I have a habit of calling people the name I think they should be called! But I do get cross when people get my name wrong! It’s French and some people anglicise it.

crazyH

I was told if you cannot remember a name, work through the alphabet - it does work !

Yes, it usually does (not always).

I always think my memory is better than DH's but a couple of times recently he's mentioned something or an event where I know I must have been there but it's a complete blank and can't even remember when he describes them to me.

Perhaps they just weren't interesting enough to retain. I sure the brain filters out unnecessary memories.

Recently my older sister told me that was nonsense as she was also there
Memory plays tricks, that's for sure.

I think you’re right Grammaretto. I’ve often wondered whether it plays some part when young adults estrange their parents/siblings. In that they truly believe their own recollections.

I was told if you cannot remember a name, work through the alphabet - it does work !

I think we sometimes only remember what we want to. I feel my memory is good but then my DD will recall a childhood memory that I have no recollection of or my memory of an event is totally different to hers.

I can’t remember what happened yesterday -yet, have one or two distinct memories of when I was probably 2 or 3 years old. That I think is a sign of dementia or Alzheimer’s- oh dear😩….yes, I do remember sorting out old photo albums yesterday, destroying unidentifiable photos, and making a chicken curry for my daughter, who did not turn up.

Since DH died 3 years ago I have only a blurry memory of the things leading up to his death. It has to be a defence mechanism to deal with pain.
When my DF died I was a young child but I can remember that day in detail. The taxi taking him to the airport - he died in an aircrash- dropped me at school and so I was the last one to see him alive.
Recently my older sister told me that was nonsense as she was also there.
Memory plays tricks, that's for sure.