Tbh, I think the idea that first memories are always the most important is just wrong

Honestly, I keep seeing people in here talk about their earliest memory like it defines who they are, and I get why that's a thing. But for me, my strongest memory isn't from when I was 4 or 5, it's from when I was 12 in junior high in Phoenix. I remember getting laughed at in front of the whole class for mispronouncing a word during a presentation, and that feeling of embarrassment stuck with me way more than any baby memory. It made me super careful about how I talk now, almost to a fault. Meanwhile, my actual first memory of eating sand at a park in 1998 does nothing for me today. So I'm starting a debate here - do your earliest memories actually shape you, or is it the later, more emotional ones that really matter? Has anyone else found that your core memories are from way later in life than people expect?

3 comments

3 Comments

tarabell26d ago

Whoa, I think the reason some people cling to early memories is because they don't actually have them, they just remember being told the story so many times it feels like real memory.

torres.thea26d ago

Oh yeah, totally. I have this super vivid "memory" of falling off my bike when I was three, but my mom swears I actually just heard her tell the story so many times I started seeing it in my head. It's wild how your brain just fills in the blanks and makes it feel real.

victor_robinson26d ago

3 years old my parents told me I used to call the fridge the "milk box" and now I literally have a memory of sitting in the kitchen staring at it saying that. Pretty sure I just heard the story a hundred times at family dinners and my brain built the whole scene around it.