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I thought to add a little nonsense to my brain. Remembering the absurd happenings in our lives might be fun. I think some of our earlier memories could have swelled, or have become distorted to accomodate our desires for the actual outcome. Enough said, let the memories flow!
I suppose I'll start- My older sister was driving us to highschool, when she drove onto a large patch of black ice. She turned into the swerve, then away from the swerve, lost control, and drove the front end of this 1970 4-door chevy Impala right into a 4 ft ditch. When I stepped out of the car, I could barely stand up because of how icy the road was. Anyway, she put the car in reverse, and I pushed from the front. I pushed the car right out of the ditch, and we went to school. That's how I remember it.
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I distinctly remember being taught how to chew with my mouth closed.
I remember it being really cold, and snowing, and me being in a hooded jacket. This dates the memory to when I was about 18 months old, and my parents (and I) were in France.
How I remember it: I was on a bridge, over a (frozen) stream, and I was eating a croissant. My dad was walking with me, and told me to chew with my mouth closed. I couldn't figure out how to do that and still breathe, so I ended up taking a great gulp of air, chewing while holding my breath, swallowing, then breathing again.
I have no idea when I worked out I could chew and breathe at the same time.
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Absurd memory: I have a memory of being maybe 4, and my aunt and uncle having a huge stuffed Snoopy doll. In my memory, this stuffed doll was so big, it nearly touched the ceiling.
When I was in my 20's, I happened to be in their basement when I saw this doll in storage. It's about 2 feet tall.
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About eleven years ago now, I was driving through downtown Urbana with Christy, waving my hands around and complaining animatedly about how bizarre things just kept happening to me. We pulled up to a stoplight, so I took the opportunity to kiss her -- we had just started courting -- and said, "I mean, no one ever believes me because the stuff is just so weird."
And as I said that, a car -- sans driver -- went rolling downhill through the intersection past us, picking up speed. I put the blinkers on, jumped out, caught the car, and pushed it into a nearby parking space. I then returned to my car and waited for the light to change again.
Most of the absurd things that happen to me involve my friends from college. One of these guys graduated with a bachelors degree in electrical engineering, and has proceeded to perform the following jobs, in various combinations, over the last four years...
1. River rafting guide and business manager. 2. Ski instructor and bus driver. 3. Auto repair guy. 4. Circus performer.
When this man is around, the absurd becomes normal.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: About eleven years ago now, I was driving through downtown Urbana with Christy, waving my hands around and complaining animatedly about how bizarre things just kept happening to me. We pulled up to a stoplight, so I took the opportunity to kiss her -- we had just started courting -- and said, "I mean, no one ever believes me because the stuff is just so weird."
And as I said that, a car -- sans driver -- went rolling downhill through the intersection past us, picking up speed. I put the blinkers on, jumped out, caught the car, and pushed it into a nearby parking space. I then returned to my car and waited for the light to change again.
"See?" I said. "See?"
Ha! I love it!
This is a recent enough memory that it's easy to get the details straight, but yours reminded me of it.
I was driving home on a small road with cars parked all along both sides. Having been the first person to turn after the light changed, all was clear in front of me until I got within sight of the next small traffic light. Up ahead a police car was stopped with the lights flashing, and this guy was running across the street nearby. Both cops had gotten out to chase him, but the guy was too fast, so they ran back to the car, jumped in, pulled up about fifteen yards just before the light at the intersection, and stopped again to get out and chase. Well, when they did, no one put the car in park nor did an emergency break get pulled. So, I, the folks in the cars behind me and all around the intersection watched as the police car crept over part of the sidewalk, in front of the stopped cars on the road intersecting the one I and the police car started on, and into an electrical pole coming out of the far sidewalk. The whole time my light was green, and yet everyone was so enraptured with the police car's progress not a soul beeped a horn.
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This is great stuff everyone- thanks! I'll contribute one more.
When I was young, I couldn't have been older than 2 since my family still lived in Southern California at the time. I remember sitting in a stroller, and watching my family standing outside the walls of what seemed to me to be the Indy 500- of course I didn't know what that was back then, but it seemed like a really fun car race. It was night time, and there were lots of bright colorful lights.
Having gone back to Disneyland later in life, I've discovered that must have been Autopia- the most ridiculous kids ride that happens to involve cars.
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I remember when I was probably about five that I woke up in the middle of the night. I could feel that it was very late, and it was dark outside, and I thought that it must be midnight. Oddly enough, instead of sleeping, everyone was up and dashing around making dinner. At midnight! I asked my mom why they were making dinner so late, and she said, "It's not late, it's barely six pm!" It's kind of a weird memory for me because my body felt so confused that even in memory it's hard to believe it wasn't at least midnight.
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I vividly remember waking up one morning in the rental house we lived in when I was four. I was lying in my bed, awake, and I said to myself, "Today is the day I'm going to stop picking my nose and putting it in my mouth."
So, lying there in my bed next to the yellow floral wallpaper, I picked my nose and wiped it on the wall.
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My earliest memory is of a turtle, which (at the time I saw it) was as big as I was. As years went on I always remembered the turtle as the same size proportional to me, so by the time I was 11 I honestly thought I had seen a 5 foot long turtle. My mother laughed at me.
I also remember us burying our cat alive. My mother insists the cat was very much dead.
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I remember opening a violin case in my parents' basement, and instead of a violin inside, there was a bloated dead cat with cobwebs in its mouth, lying on its back with its paws positioned as if it had been trying to claw its way out of the case.
Unfortunately I think this one is true, though absurd.
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quote:Originally posted by Annie: I vividly remember waking up one morning in the rental house we lived in when I was four. I was lying in my bed, awake, and I said to myself, "Today is the day I'm going to stop picking my nose and putting it in my mouth."
So, lying there in my bed next to the yellow floral wallpaper, I picked my nose and wiped it on the wall.
quote:Originally posted by dean: I remember when I was probably about five that I woke up in the middle of the night. I could feel that it was very late, and it was dark outside, and I thought that it must be midnight. Oddly enough, instead of sleeping, everyone was up and dashing around making dinner. At midnight! I asked my mom why they were making dinner so late, and she said, "It's not late, it's barely six pm!" It's kind of a weird memory for me because my body felt so confused that even in memory it's hard to believe it wasn't at least midnight.
I can relate to that kind of disorientation. When I was in my freshman year at college, I sometimes went for extended periods without more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep in a row. When an opportunity finally came, I'd sometimes fall asleep in the early afternoon and sleep for 5 or 6 hours. Waking up from that, I had a powerful sense that it was morning on the next day. It took a few minutes to orient to the reality that it was still the same day as when I fell asleep. (It was even better when I started to freak out because I thought I had overslept.)
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quote:Originally posted by Annie: I vividly remember waking up one morning in the rental house we lived in when I was four. I was lying in my bed, awake, and I said to myself, "Today is the day I'm going to stop picking my nose and putting it in my mouth."
So, lying there in my bed next to the yellow floral wallpaper, I picked my nose and wiped it on the wall.
Such a disciplined four year old, to create a rule for yourself and stick to it!
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I remember when I was 3 my mother very calmly, yet sternly, telling me to never flush the toilet while someone is taking a shower again.
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I have a very vivid memory from when my mother was in the hospital. She'd just given birth to my brother, so I was 3 years old (and 18 days), and I went into the room with my father, and she'd gotten her lunch, but hadn't had the juice they brought in with it, and I asked her if I could have her cranberry juice.
Thats what I remember about the first time I met my brother.
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I've always had a very strange memory from childhood that I discounted as being some kind of a dream. I was wearing a white dress and white shoes and pushing a large white sphere. Rolling it around like a ball.
It was only a few years ago that my mother and I were going through scrapbooks from when I was a child model that I realized it was a photo shoot where that is exactly what happened.
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I always wonder how many of my memories are actually memories of photos. It seems my clearest memories are of times that also happen to be very well-documented in my family photo album. I wonder if seeing them often enough has created a "memory" of the event, or if seeing the photos often when I was younger reinforced the memory that really was there, and I just had more opportunity to rehearse it and make it easier to retrieve.
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I have a memory of being on the playground during a storm and seeing a lightning bolt literally hit the ground directly in front of one of my friends, as we were trying to run inside.
I also have a memory of standing in the field behind my house and seeing dozens of hot air balloons go by. It must have been St. Patrick's day, because they were shaped like clover leafs, boots, kegs, etc. For some reason, I had an intense fear that one of them would land, the person would get out, offer my parents tea,(?) and then kidnap me and fly away in the balloon. I ran inside, crying, and locked the door to my bedroom, while my parents encouraged me to come out and watch the awesome hot air balloons.
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quote:For some reason, I had an intense fear that one of them would land, the person would get out, offer my parents tea,(?) and then kidnap me and fly away in the balloon. I ran inside, crying, and locked the door to my bedroom, while my parents encouraged me to come out and watch the awesome hot air balloons.
Awww. This is kind of heartbreakingly cute.
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I remember when I was about 3, 4, or maybe 5 when my mysterious uncle visited us. I remember he brought me over to the dining room table where he performed a magic trick, one that made the table cloth float up into the air at one point, as if there was something growing underneath it.
I later understood that he wasn't a magician at all, but a homeless man who chose to live on the streets while still in high school, and he was at our house begging my parents for some financial support.
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Raymond, I relate to your turtle memory. I distinctly remember the winter it "snowed up to my waist" (I live in the south) and up until a couple of years I thought that meant three- or four-foot snows. I finally realized that I was only three when that happened, so it couldn't have been all that much snow.
And, recently, I went back to the town I was born in to see the first house I ever lived in. I remembered this grandiose sort of mansion with Greek columns and the like, but it was actually a small, three bedroom house with two pillars on the front porch.
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Again about the Turtle, I remembered visiting the Mueseum of Natural History in Denver, and was struck with the big butterfly there. It had a six foot wing span. As an adult, I had a chance to take my kids, and prepped them for the big butterfly. On our visit, the biggest thing in the butterfly room was a moth that was less than 2 feet. However, as we were leaving the building, a young father with a small son, about the same age as I was when I last visited, was leaving in front of our group. And I heard the boy exclaim "Dad, did you see that giant butterfly?" "It was this big." and he spread his arms full length.
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Probably my strangest memory was just after I turned 5 - I remember because we moved about 2 months after my 5th birthday, and the morning after this memory my mum and I went to the grocery to get boxes.
I woke up in my bed, hearing a soft, motherly voice talking to me. I thought maybe my mum was in my bed snuggling with me, so I turned around, and sitting in my bed right next to window (I lived on the second floor, my bed was below a window) was a creature that looked like it was made out of glowing green embers - I can't really describe it's shape, maybe a bit monkey like? - but I remember the glow very distinctly.
When I saw it I was terrified and, after being shocked for a few seconds, jumped up and ran for my bedroom door as fast as possible. I didn't quite make it to the door when I felt grab my right leg at the knee, tripping me.
That morning my mum found me lying right by the door in my bedroom when she came to wake me up, and for a while afterwards my right knee would hurt from time to time.
I haven't told anyone about that memory since because it sounds so weird, but it's right there in my memory and very, very vivid - the strongest memory by far that I have of that house. I don't know if I fell on my knee or if it was psychological, but that helped reinforce the memory as well.
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For practically my entire life I have had the strangest memory of being at my great-grandparents wedding. Now, I do have a few memories of being very VERY young, but even so, this memory never made any sense to me. I never even bothered to tell anyone.
Then, when I was in college I was talking to my mom about just exactly how wrong I thought divorce was, and she said to me, "Well you'd better be glad that not ALL women decide to stay with worthless husbands or you wouldn't be here." I was confused, and so she explained that my both of her dad's parents had been divorced. My great-grandfather's first wife rand off with another man, and my great-grandmother took her infant son and ran away from a man who used to beat her. (Totally freaked me out because it also meant there was another uncle I'd never even heard of before!).
So then went on to explain that while my grandfather was able to get his marriage annulled because his wife had cheated on him, my grandmother had not been able to get hers annulled because apparently abuse wasn't recognized as a valid marriage ender in the Catholic church. Thus, they were only able to get married in civil court until only a few months before my great-grandfather died. They knew he was getting sick and wanted to be married in the church, and this time the priest agreed under the pretense that "Well, her first husband is bound to be dead by now".
So, they really DID have a wedding when I was only about a year old, and I really DID go to it! I was only about a year old at the time, and I don't remember anything too clearly, just being in the choir loft with my dad's mom, and watching my grandparents at the alter, and knowing it was a wedding. Still, it was cool to find out after all that time that it wasn't just some insane feeling I couldn't get rid of!
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PSI Teleport-Yeah, I agree on the want for validation of memories.
My earliest cognitive memory took place when I was two. I was laying down in the hallway for some reason, I don't know why, when my twin brother chanced to walk up to me.
I was in the way of his childlike exploits, so of course his only natural course of action was to threaten me to either move, or else get peed on.
We were two, what do you expect?
Anyway, I didn't move, he peed on me, and I remember running to my parent's bedroom, who were still together at the time, and yelling out "MOooooom! Joe peed on me!"
My Mom and Dad were sitting on the bed talking about something, and I just remember her vehement cursing.
I always thought it was a weird dream, because it seemed like such a bizarre first memory, until I told it to my twin and he said, no, he remembered that too.
I was really angry. He couldn't stop laughing.
So, in conclusion, validation is good.
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Dogbreath, there's a phenomenon called hypnapompic or hypnagogic hallucinations that is quite common. (The former word refers to those we get as we are waking up and the latter to those we get when we are falling asleep, though the latter word has come to be used for both types.) Anyway, they happen when you're asleep but you think you're awake, and you often have absolutely no clues that you're actually asleep, including no feeling of waking up from them. They seem 100% real. They can be purely auditory or they can be visual, auditory, tactile, i.e. totally real in every way. They almost always are of intruders of some sort in the room with you. Sometimes they're accompanied by a feeling of dread that the thing is going to get you. Sometimes the thing does in fact get you in the dream. Sometimes it can be accompanied by sleep-walking. I feel sure that your experience with your green intruder was one of these.
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Dogbreath, if Tatiana is right with this unofficial diagnosis, wow! Has that type of thing happened to you since?
That reminded me of a time when I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare. I was about 19 years old, maybe 20. So I woke up, and felt as though Freddie Crueger was just around the corner and was going to jump through the window and get me. I was quite terrified, and it took some time to get over it. I was in a fifth story apartment room, but when I woke up, but was still in my dream it was as though I was in one of the many houses I've lived in as a kid. I was awake but the fear was real! That never happened since, and possibly only once before- that other time it envolved a tyrannosaurus rex in my front yard when I was maybe 6 years old, and was equally terrifying.
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Tatiana: Thanks, that helps me believe I'm not crazy!
beleaguered: Not exactly, not in a way that my brain sorts it as being a real occurrence, not a dream. I've had weird dreams of being in my bedroom and having "intruders" of various sorts (including a few where my computer developed a will of its own ) that were very realistic, but I've always been able to say "that was a dream" afterwards, and dismiss it.
Maybe the reinforcement of the pain from when I fell on my knee helped "confirm" it in my mind as not just a dream, and is why I remember it so vividly. (Even now, thinking back, it doesn't feel like a dream at all)
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I remember at 3 having a hernia operation exactly what being "put under" feels and even tastes like. I remember at 3 or 4 going outside to see the eye of hurricane Allan go past. I remember at 3 thinking the whole town of Matamoros Mexico smelled like leather. We were in a flea market. Probably the same flea market my sisters said my parents bought me. (!) At 3 or 4 my parents were at the drive-thru bank and must have been talking about drinking Harvey Wallbangers. The next time we went to the drive-thru I asked my mom if she was going to get her money out of the havey wallbanger.
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I also remember going to pre-school with a note safety pinned to my shirt that said, "Paige cannot hear today. You will have to talk to her face to face if you need to get her attention." (conic ear infections - before first set of tubes)
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Re: the hypnagogia--wow, I had no idea that was a known phenomenon, I get it all the time. Probably a couple times a week if not more I'll wake up briefly in the middle of the night and see stuff that isn't there, for just a few seconds. Usually just phosphenes, but occasionally something humanoid, which is much scarier.
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Re: the hypnagogia; I used to have that happen sometimes if I used self-hypnosis to go to sleep when I was really tired and not sleeping. One afternoon,while napping, I had "The Sacred Heart of Christ" appear to me and bless me. I'm not even Catholic.
Now, as an old guy, I've discovered that going to bed at a respectable hour, relaxing but not eating before bed, and a clear continence work better, with no after effects.
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quote:Originally posted by Artemisia Tridentata: Re: the hypnagogia; I used to have that happen sometimes if I used self-hypnosis to go to sleep when I was really tired and not sleeping. One afternoon,while napping, I had "The Sacred Heart of Christ" appear to me and bless me. I'm not even Catholic.
It's a sign!
I'm really surprised it's never discussed... I never heard about it from my parents, friends, school, etc. In fact, I've never heard anyone talking about having it.
Then again, I never talked about it with anyone in real-life because I thought they'd think I was crazy.
Maybe there are a lot of people out there who secretly believe themselves insane because of this...
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Dogbreath, I had an auditory one when I was a child. It was the voice of God, in an odd way. I never told anyone but since I was a geeky scientific kid and had to understand everything, that always bothered me. For some reason the idea that it actually was God speaking never seemed a viable theory. I guess because the words he used didn't make any sense or something. If I was going to get a communication from God it wouldn't be like that. I don't know. For sure I never thought that was it. But I puzzled over that experience for years and years. I wasn't even close to being asleep at the time, though I was lying in bed and was supposed to be napping. I never woke from it, since I was already awake. It seemed totally real in every way, with no explanation I could think of. Finally in a freshman psyche class in college I learned about hypnagogic hallucinations and realized that was what it must have been.
It's cool when you finally solve a puzzle that's a dozen or more years old. =)
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One time I found this old stack of cross-word puzzles while going through my grandparent's stuff after they passed away. I was so satisfied when I solved one of them! Sorry, was that too corny? Sometimes my dad's humor comes out of me, and I can't hardly control it, not even when I have to push "Add Reply" at the end of the joke.
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Yes. Far too corny. *Glares* Next time go for cheesy.
I had a dream last night in which I had a strong memory that my parents used to drive nails through the back of their kids' throats into the walls behind their necks. Sort of to hang the kids there like you'd hang a stocking or a calendar. This was done to address sore throats, mostly.
The rest of the dream consisted of me trying to discover how/why this worked, rather than being a barbaric and dangerous practice as it first appeared. I was *sure* my parents had their reasons.
I continued to study the problem right through the first use of Snooze on the alarm clock.
It was rather bizarre. The quality of my dream-memory was just like real memory, and it was genuinely disturbing until I realized that it wasn't real.
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quote:Originally posted by beleaguered: One time I found this old stack of cross-word puzzles while going through my grandparent's stuff after they passed away. I was so satisfied when I solved one of them! Sorry, was that too corny? Sometimes my dad's humor comes out of me, and I can't hardly control it, not even when I have to push "Add Reply" at the end of the joke.
Lol, the point of the joke being that what I posted was a boring and pointless story about how I discovered hypnagogic hallucinations. It's true!
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I didn't mean any offense. I am genuinely interested in hypnagogic hallucinations, and as you can see, so are others.
Scifi,
That's incredibly bizarre! That doesn't sound like it would work very well, to alleviate sore throats that is. It seems to me you should figure out how to turn that memory into some kind of screen play. You could spring board from the whole psychology of hypnagogic hallucinations. This might be how Nightmare on Elm street started, who knows.
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When I was between 3-4 years old, there was a crack between the baseboard and the wall in my room. I could see into the crack and see that there were small people living in the walls.
I have no idea if my mom had been reading a "Borrowers"-type book to me. I do know now it was a dream, but at the time it seemed perfectly logical.
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When I was about 2 years old my great grandmother died. I remember going to her funeral and my father picking me up so I could see in to her casket. My older sister remembers the occasion too so I'm quite confident that much happened. Now comes the absurd part.
I remember asking my dad why grandma had her eyes closed. Evidently I didn't understand his answer because what I remember him saying was that she had her eyes closed because everyone was watching her and that as soon as we were all gone away she would open them.
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Lol, the point of the joke being that what I posted was a boring and pointless story about how I discovered hypnagogic hallucinations. It's true!
On the contrary, I thought that it was pretty interesting.
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And no, it wasn't going that fast.
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) that were very realistic, but I've always been able to say "that was a dream" afterwards, and dismiss it.![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
