False memories
By TheRealDawn
@dawnald (85135)
Shingle Springs, California
November 12, 2008 2:38pm CST
Was talking to my Aunt Sylvia last week and she reminded me that when she had first come to California, my parents loaned her a car so that she could go take her driver's test. She failed because the brakes on the car were so jumpy. So I said that was my Dad's Mustang. She said no, she was pretty sure it was a Mercury. So we asked Dad and sure enough it was the Mercury Comet. For some reason my brain had substituted the Mustang and I have thought for all these years that that was the car with the touchy brakes. The mind is a strange thing and in this case mine substituted a false memory, maybe because I remember the Mustang more than the Comet, we had it for longer. Does that happen to anybody here?
1 person likes this
3 responses
@cynthiann (18602)
• Jamaica
12 Nov 08
We all have false memories and this is a fact. Everyone in the world has false memories except my eldest sister. Her memory is accurate and as she keeps telling my other sister and myself- there is nothing wrong with her memory! Seriously, I honestly beleive that as we get older our memory becomes very selective and we remember what we want to remember. Although, pregnant and ill, I flew to the U.K. when my Daddy was dying of cancer and spent 6 weeks with him. Now this had been the marriage from hell yet they has stayed to gether 'because of the children'. Yet before I left he told me what a wonderful married life he had had with my mother. He was sincere. I was speechless. This is the way he remembered his marriage. There was no point on convincing hi of otherwise. Don't worry about it. You're just growing up!
1 person likes this
@dawnald (85135)
• Shingle Springs, California
12 Nov 08
Growing up hahahah I'm 50 and I'm just growing up! The funny part is that it is true! 
@dawnald (85135)
• Shingle Springs, California
12 Nov 08
Well thank you, I don't think anybody's told me I was 'just a baby' in quite a long time! 
@cynthiann (18602)
• Jamaica
12 Nov 08
Of course it is true my dear friend. At fifty I was starting a new career and now I am sixty and still looking for ways to earn extra money. I really am concerned what I will be doing when I am really grown up! You, my dear friend, are just a baby! Everyone ten years youngewr than you are babies and anyone ten years older than you are old. so there! Now you know. LOL
1 person likes this
@ronaldinu (12422)
• Malta
2 Dec 08
Sometimes our minds do play trick on us. I always mix up dates for example. I cannot remember anniversaries or birthdays.
© ronaldinu 2008
1 person likes this
@dawnald (85135)
• Shingle Springs, California
2 Dec 08
I don't mix up dates but I do have a funny kind of a disassociation thing going. For example my brain will know that on the third I have an appointment and that on Wednesday I have a different appointment but not make the connection that Wednesday IS the third and that there is a conflict!
@KingstonB (31)
• Canada
12 Nov 08
Sadly, I feel that alot of my childhood memories are something I must have dreamed up. Sometimes I go places and they feel SOOOO familiar to me only to find out I'd never been there before. I'm fairly open minded so sometimes I wonder if there is some way these could be past life memories (or not, who knows! ;p).
@dawnald (85135)
• Shingle Springs, California
12 Nov 08
Who knows? Maybe.
I have this childhood memory of being on Let's Make a Deal and being asked to do the twist. I'm sure it must have been a dream but it still feels kind of real after all these years1
