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Comment by turtleyacht | Hacker News Reader

To the folks here, do you remember your childhoods at all?

Of the memories you have gathered up, do the vivid ones center around loud, violent interactions (like yelling)?

I ask because I don't remember a lot of my childhood, except some vivid memories around things being my fault. Being blamed for things.

I love my parents. They did everything for me. But my memories of happiness are in photos and more recent events. Decades ago are just, well, empty. Take lots of pictures, y'all--and recordings!

Thank-you.

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This is a bit of a tangent from the original topic, but I've pondered the same thing. I'm often amazed by how clearly some people appear to be able to remember events that happened when they were very young. For me, I barely remember stuff that happened even a decade ago, much less when I was a child. The mortifying memories probably stick longer than the pleasant ones do, but ultimately they all fade. It used to bother me, especally when sharing with partners who found it a reason to pity me, and for a period I wondered if I actually had some kind of trauma that I was hiding from myself. But eventually I stopped caring, because worrying about holes in your memory is just wasting time you could have spent thinking about things that are productive or entertaining or actionable in the present. I have come to think that my mind just works a bit differently to the folks who are more focused on their past. For me, now, I accept that if something no longer appears useful, it gets garbage-collected. Doesn't mean it wasn't worth experiencing in the first place, just means I acknowledge it was a fleeting moment of joy (or pain) and that's fine. I would be a lot more worried if I started losing actually-important memories like language skills, motor skills, general knowledge and so on.

I'm more like you. My father though is someone with a bizarre (to me anyway) encyclopedic memory. I am quite convinced at this point that some people just store differently than others.

Nice, I like that. I'll embrace the memories I do have, and be thankful that I haven't lost the functional stuff. After all, those same sources could be used for inspiration and purpose.

Some memories though, physically stop me for a second. I have to blink them away, like phantasms to dispel. Those I would want to face head on. I always promise myself I will conquer them by writing or drawing them; someday I should have a certain list of them.

A while ago, I walked through the park, that backs on to the house where I grew up. And I was struck with a shift of perspective. I remembered being up by the house in the yard. The perspective had been different, once. That little wooden board, had once seemed a formidable wall, and the garden was like a jungle I had once been scared to go into. I can step over it all in two big strides now. Except I don't really know. It's very hard to pin down anything specific. Is that really a memory of being in that garden? Or just what I know must have once been true? Things are less hazy after about the age of seven or so. I still dream about being in class in primary school sometimes, the oddest little recollections about people I haven't seen in decades. But it is certainly fading with time. Becoming the sort of reconstructions that must have been true.

These long term memories evolve into something else as the act of viewing them from that point of time (with all that comes with it) changes how they are. That’s what strikes me when I get those spooky memories.

Before age five, maybe a few memories. A handful (or less) with each decade so far.

More and more, I'm feeling sorry I didn't keep a daily journal.

When I go back far enough in my memories I feel as though I once lived in another place, not just another time. I've tried to explain this to my wife and she doesn't get it. I tell her that it was another world in 1967 in my earliest now-fleeting memories. Stores were different, the streets were different, everything was different. In less than a decade though everything would change, would be like it is now.

That is how it feels at least. Much closer to a dream. Perhaps instead dreams and my earliest memories are one and the same.

Probably someday, we'll see VR/AR of those same places, and folks will be able to walk, ride, and smell everything nearby several times over in the span of the road trip.

"But we've already been there!"

"Yeah, but not in real life you haven't."

Or, instead of brand new places, people relive the same ones with different--injected or modified--memories.

I remember quite a lot about my childhood.

You ask about yelling, I vividly remember how when my father shouted at me/my brothers, the glasses in the kitchen would vibrate against each other and make a clanking noise whenever he finished a sentence, and we'd just sit in silence. Sometimes even the doorbell would start making noise from his voice.

But I also have a lot of good memories, and I can luckily say that my father has turned around when I got a bit older. I think my parents lacked the maturity to have children at their age.

The maturity bit hits hard. I know some of my weaknesses, and as always I turn to books. But when they are childrens books and they have good advice--and I wanted them to be better at it than me--it's like, I didn't acquire these tools myself, either.

When the books are teaching (or admonishing, in my case) both of us, it's better than nothing I guess.

Oh wow. I thought I was the only one. Like I wasn't abused, not to that extent, but I remember my parents fighting, or the time my mom hit me because I couldn't spell a word, stuff like that.

Thanks. I should try to collect them. Maybe like an exercise in mindfulness? There are certainly only a finite number of them. Not all are bad. Maybe there are insights in them.

Instead of "problems" as "opportunities," it could become "trauma" to "healing."

I remember a lot of stuff, especially since the third grade, which is when my primary career aspirations formed, that persist to this day.

That's awesome. It's nice when one can remember the why and when. I hope to "awaken" my kids somehow, so I'd like to try different activities. School already has dance, music--even robotics later on.

Just something they can feel like they own and can be interested in. Folks around me have their thing, and I'm just floating around. I have books for most things, but haven't dived into most of them.

I don't have much memory before ten years old, in my fifties now.

I have a picture of me standing in the snow, thick coat and the squares of a wood-and-paper door behind me. But I don't remember the floor inside, or the ceiling, or anything else. My own room, the environs around. Nothing else. I must have been just a couple years old, even.

It might be worth exploring that with a counsellor. Good ones will offer a free session and you’re not doing any wrong to try out a handful of intro calls. Best

Early thirties, probably less than 10 memories of my childhood

Yes, it feels like that. They come and go. If I write them down, maybe I will know for sure whether they are a dozen or less.

Who knows; maybe reflecting on one is a doorway to others...

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