There is a situation I once found myself in when I was only 4 or 5 years old. However, whenever I bring up what had occurred on that day, my mother, who was also present, has no recollection of it ever occurring. Every single time I think about what had happened, or what my memory says had happened, it annoys me to think that it all could have been but a figment of my imagination. Now for the story:
As I stated previously, I was four or five years old at the time at which I found myself in a terribly predicament. From K-12th grade, I NEVER found myself in any trouble concerning the principle, or vice principles. I was always a good child, who did as he was told, and was always commended rather than reprimanded. However, one rather vivid memory that exists in a dank crevice of my brain had occurred during a field trip. It was towards the end of the school-year, and our whole class was at Colonial Park (a local park the town over from mine) for a picnic with our families. As I was playing with the other children, there was one child, Nick, who I never particularly liked. He was mean, smelly, and just had a terrible attitude. So, as my memory goes, we were all playing basketball, when he began to drive towards the hoop. I proceeded to stick my foot out, exclaim, ‘Eat dirt fat boy,’ and ultimately trip him. Nick let out a wretched cry, and I ran away. I grabbed my mother, trying to leave before I could get into trouble, but the principle eventually caught up to us.
What makes this story rather interesting is the fact that although I have a very vivid image of this all occurring, my mother strongly believes that it had never occurred. This troubles me deeply, because I can see every last detail of that day. I have often questioned whether I was creating a memory, or my mother was simply repressing the same memory in her own memory banks.
In class, we learned of retroactive, and proactive effects on memory, and how events can change memories already stored in one’s brain negatively. So, in this case, it is possible that there was some sort of retroactive interference. In my eyes, it is possible that new memories have simply pushed out the memory of me tripping Nick that day in my mother’s brain. Or it could be that I simply created this memory on my own.
The world may never know.
You’re blog has definitely related to one of my personal childhood experiences. I think I remember that I once grabbed a girl from her hair in kindregarten because she tried to steel my apple. However, my brother, who was with me in the same kindergarten says that it never actually happened. Sometimes I get really confused as you do because retreivel cues differ from a an individual to another. But the fact that our brain can modify our memories or create memoreis that we’ve never experienced before is completely fascinating to me.
It is very interesting to see how important retrieval cues are in remembering what happened in our past, but it is also strange to think that I may be falsely encoding memories that I think are definitely real. I wonder if we are making false retrieval cues in our brain that allows us to continue to create the memories that have been changed or even completely made up! This is a great blog post, I have a very similar concept to mine with stories about my childhood memories that I think we all can relate to.
My sister and I share a similar issue in which we both remember the events of one night differently. It was snowing pretty hard as we had left our family friends house. About five minutes away from our house, there is a large hill. That night it was covered in snow. In my recollection, we saw a lot of cars slipping and unable to make it up the hill. Instead, we took a different route with a small hill and some back roads to make it home. My sister, on the other hand, believes that we tried to make it up the hill before we finally gave up.
I think that there is a possibility that my sister and I have retrieved the memories and have slowly added to them. This could easily be the case that we each had different surroundings as we recalled the memories and added to the memories new information based on the responses of the people we were sharing the memory with. It is impossible to know who is right (although I maintain that I am) without going back in time.