An embarassing admission

J

Josiah

Senior Member
Location
50 miles east of Cincinnati, OH
I would say that my memory of the distant past was maybe a little sub par, but not grossly defective. Still I was really chagrined when I tried to recall proposing to my first wife. I couldn't come up with thinking about the decision to do it. I'm not the kind of guy who would propose marriage on a whim. I mean I would have thought about it. And you would certainly think I'd remember actually doing it? Where did it take place? Did I get down of one knee? Did I have a ring? I can't remember anything. I mean this is scary. What's wrong with me?
 

Nothing is wrong with you at all Josiah IMO..I understand you would think you'd remember it due to agonising over it for a long time..however I actually don't remember my present o/h proposing to me either..I know he did, and what's worse it was only 15 years ago, and I can't even remember what songs we had played at our wedding ceremony, and neither can he isn't that awful. ? we know they were Folk songs, but what they were we can't remember., although we can remember the registrar saying how beautiful they were :D.. Yours was much much longer ago than that, so I wouldn't go fretting about your forgetfulness if I were you..
 
Don't worry about it Josiah. I'm trying not to beat myself up over forgetting many things. Husband is even worse. He swears up and down we did not to the cinema to see The Book Thief last year.
 

Ameriscot said:
Don't worry about it Josiah. I'm trying not to beat myself up over forgetting many things. Husband is even worse. He swears up and down we did not to the cinema to see The Book Thief last year.
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Memories are notoriously unreliable. I often swear something did or didn't happen only to find out later I was wrong. I can't remember my proposal either Josiah or even if it was me :confused: I wouldn't worry at all, I even have trouble remembering my grandchildren's birthdays and they are much more recent.
 
Thanks Holly and Annie for telling me I'm not the only amnesiac out there. My suspicion it that there is a psychological explanation to the effect that my mind decided that this life episode should be encased in concrete and dropped off the end of a pier.
 
Josiah, like all the others, there are segments of my life that I cannot remember. Despite trying very hard. Never read of it being substantiated, yet I believe after a certain age we have so many memories that our mind becomes selective and only retains only a portion of them. For, as we age the recent memories do become more difficult to bring up....yet those long term memories, that we have run through our minds numerous times, are very vivid.
What kind of alarms me is the inability to remember words/names at times. And the spelling of words. Early dementia?
 
ndynt, when I was a kid I read A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Homes) and there was a passage in there about what you describe that scared me and stuck with me all these years.

Arthur Conan Doyle quote:

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. (A Study in Scarlet)”

I don't think I buy that theory now, though.
 
I began to remember so much more after I did an exercise that took a while, but seemed to have worked.

I went through my entire life with a timeline, outlining everything that happened and significant events by date and place. It was hard because I had moved around so much and everything was like a big mess like a ball of twisted wool. It seems to have done the trick, because now I can pretty much go back anywhere in my life, time or place have a complete movie of that time.

Memoir writing exercises help too.... so many techniques and methods -- find a word, any word and associate everything you know about it.... and write a page or two in a journal. I recommend reading some books on memoir writing for anyone interested. Amazing.... but at your own risk if there are things you'd rather not think about. This is the way it is with my sister, who claims she doesn't remember anything about anything and doesn't like thinking about the past. I love reading memoirs written by regular people, like us, not famous.... and how they view their lives.
 
Nancy, interesting....but, seems so self limiting. Like going to a banquet, with a McDonald's hamburger sack. So much in the world to think about and relish. Personally, I am too curious to prevent my mind from exploring.
Cookie, I too would prefer not to remember portions of my life. Even though they still invade my memories. I have always loved auto-biographies vs novels. For the same reasons you love memoirs. Why Margaret Meade became my idol, at a very young age.
 
Nona, that's a very good way of putting it - invade my memories. That happens to me all the time - sometimes like re-runs of a bad tv show. I never read Margaret Meade, but now I'm curious to try her. Thanks.
 
Interesting lady, Merlin. Thanks. I shall have to see if my library or Kindle has her books. Her saying, when she was young....forty was old. So true. If still so, some of us are not old. We must be considered ancient. :eek:ops1:
 
ndynt said:
Interesting lady, Merlin. Thanks. I shall have to see if my library or Kindle has her books. Her saying, when she was young....forty was old. So true. If still so, some of us are not old. We must be considered ancient. :eek:ops1:
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I believe many would consider us beyond the grave Nona :angel:

Regarding the books, the best one is a compilation of five of her books, available on Kindle http://is.gd/AYsTaT they are an amazing read, full of life, love and tragedy and at times risque :)
 
NancyNGA said:
ndynt, when I was a kid I read A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Homes) and there was a passage in there about what you describe that scared me and stuck with me all these years.

Arthur Conan Doyle quote:

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. (A Study in Scarlet)”

I don't think I buy that theory now, though.
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OMG, Nancy, I remember reading the same passage and it stuck in my mind as well, especially the part about the "elastic walls".
 
I love Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes works, but ..... since that is a quote from his A Study in Scarlet, they would be the words of Sherlock Holmes, his character, who I believe was also addicted to, was it morphine? or was it Conan Doyle himself addicted to the drug -- in which case, not a theory I would take seriously about the amount of knowledge humans can retain. The human brain is capable of retaining much much more information than we can ever imagine, something probably not known to Arthur Conan Doyle at the time he wrote his books.
 
I have read every Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes Novels, several times.. I got addicted to them in my teens. Holmes was addicted to Cocaine and sometimes Morphine, there is no evidence to suggest Doyle himself ever dabbled in drugs but he did have a broad knowledge of them having studied as a Physician and surgeon of which he was highly qualified .

However Cocaine was not the condemned substance it is today.. way back in the 19th century and early 20th centuries. In fact it was often actively supported by many in the medical field as a drug which could be used for it's fatigue reducing and mood elevating properties and even considered for use as a cure for alcoholism.

Interesting of course that Arthur Conan Doyles' own father was an alcoholic who eventually succumbed to pathological psychosis and died in a mental asylum, so it would be reasonable to presume that Doyle may have experimented with cocaine and Morphine, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that he became a habitual user.

However Conan Doyle himself tired very quickly of Holmes, and really felt his his calling apart from Medicine was to write Historical Novels, but having had a taste of the Sherlock Holmes Novel the public were not interested in his Historical Novels and begged for more SH..eventually CD decided that the only way he could be rid of Holmes was to kill him off which he did along with Moriarty in the reichenbach Falls.. unfortunately he still didn't manage to make his historical novel writings pay as well as his SH novels so amid an uproar from his fans and the lack of interest in his HN's he figuratively raised Holmes from the dead in the Hound of the Baskervilles ( supposedly set before the Final Problem) then resurrected him properly in The Adventure of the Empty House!!
 
hollydolly said:
I have read every Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes Novels, several times.. I got addicted to them in my teens. Holmes was addicted to Cocaine and sometimes Morphine, there is no evidence to suggest Doyle himself ever dabbled in drugs but he did have a broad knowledge of them having studied as a Physician and surgeon of which he was highly qualified .

However Cocaine was not the condemned substance it is today.. way back in the 19th century and early 20th centuries. In fact it was often actively supported by many in the medical field as a drug which could be used for it's fatigue reducing and mood elevating properties and even considered for use as a cure for alcoholism.

Interesting of course that Arthur Conan Doyles' own father was an alcoholic who eventually succumbed to pathological psychosis and died in a mental asylum, so it would be reasonable to presume that Doyle may have experimented with cocaine and Morphine, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that he became a habitual user.

However Conan Doyle himself tired very quickly of Holmes, and really felt his his calling apart from Medicine was to write Historical Novels, but having had a taste of the Sherlock Holmes Novel the public were not interested in his Historical Novels and begged for more SH..eventually CD decided that the only way he could be rid of Holmes was to kill him off which he did along with Moriarty in the reichenbach Falls.. unfortunately he still didn't manage to make his historical novel writings pay as well as his SH novels so amid an uproar from his fans and the lack of interest in his HN's he figuratively raised Holmes from the dead in the Hound of the Baskervilles ( supposedly set before the Final Problem) then resurrected him properly in The Adventure of the Empty House!!
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Same here Holly, I remember in my teens borrowing them all from the local library in their red hardback covers, I also remember being very disappointed when I had read them all. I did go on to read all his other novels and works, but can't remember what they were about or if I liked them :confused:
I did the same with Agatha Christie, ...read all her books and was disappointed when they ran out, .......all these teenage addictions we used to have...
 
Holly, you are very knowledgeable on Conan Doyle. Yes, I agree cocaine was not illegal back then and it actually was an ingredient in coca cola at the turn of the last century. But I was addressing the human brain's capacity to retain much more information than was believed in Conan Doyle's time, on the subject of remembering.

I have read a fair amount of Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie and Dashiel Hammett, and every one of Sue Grafton's books (A is for Alibi, B is for Burgler, etc.) and lots of others, and am an avid detective/mystery/crime fiction fan. There is so much out there. I particularly enjoy the Dashiel Hammett Thin Man movies from the 40s, all the Poirior (sp?) television and Miss Marples too. Sadly they ran out and we only re-runs left.
 

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