I sometimes play a little game when my mind is unoccuppied with weighty matters. I try to trace back my first memory as a child. When did I become capable of remembering my life.
You really have to be an investigator to attempt this game because the further you go back in time, the more mushy your memory becomes. I've found that visual cues that mark a time period are helpful, specifically the crib because it defines a specific age. My first memory (for now) is being put into my crib without my peach cobbler desert because I'd misbehaved. I must have been about two, I would think.
I had my most bizarre experience with memory only a year ago. When I was four years old, I drowned. My dad discovered me at the bottom of the pool, threw me onto the deck, and I shortly gushed water out of my lungs, coughing and sputtering. I have absolutely no recollection of this event, and only learned about it by chance chatting with my father.
How could I forget such a traumatic event and remember a much earlier trivial event? The mind and memory are strange in the way they work, and we will never fully understand it.
Memory is so important to us as human beings. Aside from daily functioning, our memory is necessary for a concept of ourselves. Who are we if we have no memories?
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