re: Did you ride the gondola over the Miss River at the 1984 World’s Fair?

quote:

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Not to be a dick. But your memory is not real. It is something created by your knowledge of the event, and the pictures confirming it.

For example, my grandfather died when I was almost 4. Yet, I can remember sitting in his lap. However, my memory is basically just a picture of him sitting in the chair, that has somehow become ingrained in my brain as my memory.

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Not to be a dick? Dude, that's exactly what you are doing. You didn't say his memory MAY NOT be real, you said his memory is not real.

Just because your memory from when you were 3 years old is hazy and you feel the memory of your grandpa is "faked" doesn't mean EVERYONE else has the same crappy memory.

I have always had a ridiculous memory and have distinct memories going back to when I was 2 years old, not of things with photos that I saw later, but of things that happened without photo sessions-- songs on the radio that scared me, things people said to me or my parents, leaving before dawn to pick up my uncle from the airport when he came back from Vietnam; the trick my parents and grandparents played on me on Christmas Eve when we drove around the neighborhood to try and find Santa Claus and couldn't, but when we got back to the house he had come by "while we were gone".

All of which has been confirmed by older relatives and others who were there, often with "oh, yeah, I forgot about that".