Snippets

Memories are not solid…from an NIH abstract this brief quote:

An established memory can be made transiently labile if retrieved or reactivated. Over time, it becomes again resistant to disruption and this process that renders the memory stable is termed reconsolidation. The reasons why a memory becomes labile after retrieval and reconsolidates still remains debated.

Don - So I’m walking my dog the other day and I have this thought about memories, specifically really short “snippets” of my childhood. Less than a minute in duration, often only seconds. I thought it would be a fun exercise to share a couple, and ask my readers to share one with me. While I’m not putting a word limit on it, I’d still like it to be super brief. As an added bonus…if it took place with another person, check in with them, and see if they remember it the same way, or at all.

Don - The day, or around the day Elvis died, my sister Mimi was giving me driving lessons while on vacation in Cape Cod. On sandy roads with standing water, after a summer rain, we hydroplaned my mom’s Honda Civic wagon. Instead of slowing down the next time it happened, we made sure to do it again and again.

Eastern Copperhead

Carol - I was about 7 and upon being called into dinner, I was stopped short of the side door, and between me and the house was a snake, longer than I was tall. My parents kept calling me, but I wouldn’t move. Eventually my Dad was frustrated and came out. He dispatched the snake and I went in for dinner.

Don- At 8 years old, I was hit by a car when a man drove around a corner (sort of cut the corner) and hit me in the back, despite my seeing him come and trying to run away. He stopped just short of having the oil pan scrape my back and head. I was bloodied, and only a few houses away from home. I either walked, or let him drive me home, and my sisters threw me in a bath. One of them had the presence of mind to try to get a name and license plate, but he had already gone.

Don - I was 9, or 13, or something young, but never a strong swimmer. I pushed a struggling kid from the deep to the shallow end of a motel pool, and in my mind, thereby saving his life. His parents leaned toward the pool and said, “we would have helped, but we had our street clothes on”. Even as a kid I thought, “this kids parents suck, and I wonder how his life will turn out”. With parenting like that, I still wonder whose life I saved.

Carol - I rode my bike over to my friend’s house, she was dating my brother, but I crashed badly (and still have scar on my knee). I showed up to the house quite bloodied, and the owner (step father of my friend?) came out to calm the dogs who had started fighting when I arrived. But instead they bit him badly! I called my brother for a rescue and he took me home to get patched up.