traces of memory and fried eggs

by refiners fire 13 Replies latest jw friends

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  refiners fire

  Does anyone have flashes of memory from LONG ago that still recur and affect them very strongly? Physically? Even 30 years later?

  Example.
  I still get flashes of something that happened when I was about 9 years old. An insignificant happening, you would think.
  I was walking home from school, 35 years ago, and on the footpath I saw a tiny bird that had fallen from a nest.
  I can still see that bird. It always recurs every time i eat fried eggs. Its eyes were big and swollen shut. For some reason I thought "fried eggs" looking at it.
  Now, everytime I see fried eggs I see that bird.
  Another fried egg memory.Something else that links to fried eggs in my mind.

  When I was in school 30 years ago,I was about 14, in science class they brought in a box of bulls eyes (real eyes)for us to dissect with razor blades.
  What the hell were they thinking, those teachers?
  I still see the bulls eyes too.
  Enough said I reckon....
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  Simon

  uurgh ...

  I just had fried egg butties for breakfast as well

  Actually, this reminded me of something related when I was little which I'd managed to forget (until now - thanks!) ...

  One of the eggs my mum was cooking with had a dead chick in it which was a bit horrific and definitely put me off eggs for quite a while.
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  refiners fire

  I am just curious as to why certain, seemingly insignificant things, events, stick in memory while others do not.
  Another example.
  The spider.
  When I was 6 (about) there was a bonfire in our backyard and my brother threw a piece of paper onto the fire.
  There turned out to be a spider on the paper and it scurried about looking for a way out. The flames closed in from all sides and it ran about in ever tightening circles until the heat totally surrounded it.
  At that point it went into a ball. its last defence.
  Then it burnt.
  Now why in hell would a memory like that stick forever?
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  Beck_Melbourne

  Hi Refiners

  Yes its strange how memories are ignited. I quite often associate a smell to a memory...its not often that I see something that will spark it off...its when I smell something. Oil of Ulan skin cream always reminds me of my grandmother...and the smell of fresh spring flowers (freesias) always remind me of my children when they were born, having all been born in spring. For some, the smell of flowers reminds them of death...quite the opposite for me. I guess thats not really in line with your thread...but I just thought I'd mention it.

  Beck
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  bitter mango

  hmmm, this reminds me of something a bit like what i have experienced..

  everytime i see one of those yellow lemon shaped bottles for lemon juice i think of my dad and the old house we lived in together. for some reason and get really sad, but it doesn't trigger any particular memory. i just see the kitchen of the old farmhouse we lived on when i was about 6 or so. i dunno. that house creeps me out tho.
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  refiners fire

  Beck.
  I think the fact that the memories that you recite are positive memories wheras mine are negative memories reveals a difference between us.
  Mango.
  see, thats the best example yet.
  The sight of a lemon juice bottle produces feelings of sadness within you!
  Amazing stuff!
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  bitter mango

  hmm simon, you reminded me of something else (way off topic, sorry). but when i was a kid my dad told me that soy sauce was chicken's blood ! it was many years before i ever tasted it again, and still sometimes i wonder . i was a stupid kid tho... i ate tuna for years and years until one day mom informed me it was fish (hahah, i seriously didn't know!), and i haven't eaten it since .
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  dedalus

  RF,

  Have you ever read Remembrance of Things Past, by Proust? Swann's Way, the first book in the series, has a lot to do with the way certain objects and smells -- the dipping of cake in a cup of hot tea, say -- can reinvoke memories long forgotten, that might otherwise remain buried ...

  For me it's the combined smell of chalk dust and pencil shavings. I am seven years old and ascending the rickety wooden staircase of my elementary school, running my hands over the grooved banister, ready to pass through the heavy green doors. There is a library book in my lunchbox that I plan to hide behind my notebook while the teacher drones away, and I can't wait to get out of my goulashes and behind my small desk, behind Genevive Vialobos, whom I am following up the stairs, whose long dark hair will entrance me between chapters.

  I know what you mean: it's powerful, transformative, if only for a moment.

  Dedalus
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  plmkrzy

  Everytime i smell a skunk I think of my ex-boyfriends father.
  Not because he stunk. But because, get this, he ACTUALLY LIKED! the smell of skunk!. We have a lot of skunks around here. If I knew how to detatch smell from memory believe me I would do it.

  If anyone finds a way Let me know.

  "I look to the sea, reflections in the waves spark my memory
  Some happy,some sad"

  styx
  
  This one most definitely Happy
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  Francois

  Beck_Melbourne, and all Y'all, it's been said that odor is the most compelling of all memory triggers. In my experience this is so true. The right smell can take me back to when I was six years old and younger.

  Having been raised on the coast of Georgia, the smell of the marsh at low tide is highly evocative since I've smelled it all my life and it's a very pleasant smell to me (although others think it's a big put off).

  One whiff of Tabu perfume and I'm in the back seat of a 1952 Plymouth with my girlfriend in the eleventh grade getting our first, um, taste of the thing that comes so natural. Tabu will always put me in that back seat.

  The scientists haven't, I don't think, discovered just why odor is such a powerful stimulant of memories, but they do know that it's a fact.

  Francois

  NOTE TO GOVERNING BODY: You've been challenged to a debate, boys. Dont you have ANY balls?