Earliest Memories

In FF's recent Six Questions update, I was sorta...underwhelmed. But that's okay, because there was some interesting things he said nonetheless.

One thing I've noticed not many people talking about (really, no one is talking much about this yearly update) is the incident that happened when he was a year old, and could still remember it. I know what that incident was, and believe it could be important.

Many people can't remember events that happened when they were very young, but I remember several. I was about a year or two old when I discovered cabinets, and that they were nice to hide in. I remember crawling into them, and eventually my mom stopped frantically searching the house every time I disappeared, and just started opening cabinets.

I remember falling off the countertop (I was a climber) when I was a year old.

I remember sitting in between my mom and dad driving down the then dirt road towards our house in Stuart. I remember my mom and dad were having a conversation, and I remember the long stick shift coming out from the floor of the VW Bug.

I remember the coral snake gnawing on my toe as I played with our pet ducklings. I remember seeing it flying through the air when I jerked my foot up to get it off. I remember my dad scooping me up and taking me into the garage to check the "bite." (It was dry)

I remember my mom screaming at us to get inside the house when a large alligator came cruising up the canal.

I remember loving the taste of Vick's Formula 44 cough syrup and my mom had to hide the bottle to keep me from gulping it down. Lol.

And much more from before I was three years old.

Anyway, why do some people remember those early memories so vividly?

I'm not sure, but I seem to remember a study about why only some people remember their dreams in the morning, and that's due to a certain part of the brain being more active than those who don't remember their dreams. I remember many of my dreams, and found it strange when James said he never remembers his dreams.

I found the study...a team of French scientists found that people that recall dreams easily were able to recall 5.2 dreams per week (I have no idea how you can have .2 of a dream) and people who were not able to recall dreams easily could only recall about 2 dreams per month.

"High dream recoilers" have more periods of wakefulness every night, and I can say that's very true of me. Last night, I maybe got 2 1/2 hours of good sleep.

Here is the dreaming part of your brain:

Maybe it's the same way with recalling childhood memories...but there are some theories out there which also help to explain why we remember what we do.

Emotionally-charged events in childhood are better remembered than other, more everyday events. For example, when the coral snake was chomping on my toe, the surge of adrenaline in my tiny little body could've been the ingredient that cemented that memory into my brain.

My mom screaming as the alligator drew near was probably emotionally charged, too.

Why I remember climbing into cabinets, or riding in the Bug, I have no idea.

A study also found that memory of painful events are remembered much longer than those involving physical pain. I guess that's why women have more than one baby. Lol.

Anyway, memory is a funny thing, and still mysterious in many ways. I guess that what makes each of so unique, and what makes every person just as important as the next. Every soul is sacred. No one is exactly like you, no one knows what you do, no one else in the universe experiences life in the same way you do.

When you think about life like that, you can't help looking at your fellow man with a little less judgment. No one will ever fit my shoes, and I can never fit anyone else's. Human nature is only reliable to a point. There will always be exceptions to the rule. There will always be unknowns. And maybe the best thing we can do is accept and seek to understand before we rush to label and judge.