Remembering things

It's funny, isn't it, the memories one carries from childhood and early adulthood. Different family members will have forgotten or recalled things differently.

My older sister has a phenomenal memory bank from childhood, and hers is very number-centric, if that makes any sense. She remembers dates, anniversaries of events, etc., 'the big snow-storm of 197-. It amazes me when she brings up something of which I have absolutely no recall.

But I think because all of our brains work differently, we remember what was important to us at the time. I remember where certain birds had nests that I would watch when I was a child, which would not even register in her memory because it meant nothing to her.

RosieMaw, I like your analogy of a bookshelf. The oldest books that we put on the shelf maybe registered or stuck in our brains because we had only lived 10 years at the time, so put certain memories on the shelf. After 40 or 50 years, there are so many books collected that we can't recall all of them, or where we got them!

I have a friend who is a retired psychiatrist. We both worry about forgetting names, titles of books etc. She says that if you can remember the name within 24 hours, you're not dementing (yet). It's so nice when that name pops back into our head, quite reassuring really. Buy I expect I sometimes forget what I've forgotten....

My late husband had an amazing image memory, and could recall fine visual detail about houses we’d lived in, cars, furniture we’d owned, he could picture it all in his head. My memories are more focused on feelings, I can recall how I felt on certain days, and even remember the exact words people said to me. But there have been occasions when I’ve been shown photos of myself in younger days, and I simply cannot remember ever being there. I have a friend whose memories are solely about what she wore when, she can recall every birthday party dress from the age of 3!!

I've misremembered something and I still can't think for the life of me how!
Attending a funeral of an uncle last year I was reminded that he and his wife had moved into their property ten years before. This startled me because I can distinctly remember my Mum phoning and telling me that he had become unwell on the day they moved in. It had been extremely hot, he had drunk too much water and developed hyponatremia (over hydration). An ambulance was called and he was rushed to hospital.
All this was true but it couldn't have been my Mum who told me because she died 20 years ago. So who told me? I still have no idea....

Memory is such a strange thing. As a perfect example: I can remember a brief interaction I had with a colleague over 40 years ago. It was a totally inconsequential and very short conversation about my new shoes! I was only at that company for 18 months (temping). I didn't know the colleague before and I haven't seen her since. Why on earth have my memory banks stored that utterly trivial detail?

Conversely, I recently found photographs of what was obviously a holiday with my late mum, an old family friend and my then very young son. They were seemingly taken in West Wales in the summer. I cannot for the life of me remember anything about it, nothing at all!

We are in the middle of renovating our kitchen, and to make room, we have put the vast majority of "stuff" into a storage unit.

The renovation/building work began in September. In the November Black Friday extravaganza, I bought a dual drawer Nina airfryer - I had been managing with a microwave, slow cooker and electric steamer until then.

I knew I had bought a dual drawer airfryer in Costco about 18 months ago, but was "saving it for the new kitchen". That one was buried at the back of the storage unit. The Ninja was a really good price, and so (obviously) I couldn't not buy it.

I sent my husband up to the storage unit to retrieve something in December, and when he came back, he said "you do realise that we've got one of those Ninjas in the storage unit". I argued with him about it, saying it was probably just the box that we'd used to store other stuff in. He was adamant it was another airfryer.

I didn't believe him until he sent me a photo of it.

I have zero recollection of buying it. None at all. I have checked back on my Amazon account and can see I bought it in July of last year. Still absolutely no recollection of buying, or receiving it. Or even seeing it stored in the house before it went to the storage unit.

So I now have three dual drawer airfryers, which I do concede is overload