Do You Have Any Strange Memories?

I remember one of the boys in my first primary class kicking the door and crying he wanted to go home, another was a girl spitting on her handkerchief and rubbing her black patent shoes saying her mother would "kill her" if they were dirty we must have been 7-8. I remember their names too but won't say.😂

suelld

I remember going to the local swimming baths with a couple of friends. I must have been 9 ish. I remember being pleased with myself as I had put my one piece swimming costume on under my clothes not to have to get changed when I got there.
We finished our swim , and stripped off our wet costumes, towel dried when I realised I had forgotten to bring any underwear!!
I wasn’t going to put my soaking wet costume back on so towelled off and put on my skirt and top. I remember walking past the old cinema to the bus stop completely naked under my skirt. I had to travel home on the bus also naked! Never told anyone and it must have been warm cos I had no coat only my wet costume rolled up in a towel!
Never forgot the embarrassed feeling !

That reminds me of when I was in the dentist's waiting room one morning, some 30 years ago.

Two grandparents were there with their young granddaughter and had just noticed realised that she hadnt put any knickers on when she got dressed!

They were so embarrassed and frantically trying to get her to sit 'modestly' on a chair, but of course she was too young to either understand or care.

J wonder if she remembers that now 🤣

I remember going to the local swimming baths with a couple of friends. I must have been 9 ish. I remember being pleased with myself as I had put my one piece swimming costume on under my clothes not to have to get changed when I got there.
We finished our swim , and stripped off our wet costumes, towel dried when I realised I had forgotten to bring any underwear!!
I wasn’t going to put my soaking wet costume back on so towelled off and put on my skirt and top. I remember walking past the old cinema to the bus stop completely naked under my skirt. I had to travel home on the bus also naked! Never told anyone and it must have been warm cos I had no coat only my wet costume rolled up in a towel!
Never forgot the embarrassed feeling !

I remember my grandad rubbing camphorated oil on my back and chest when I had a cold. We lived with my grandparents. He used to warm the bottle and his hands by the coal fire and then rub it on me under my vest and liberty bodice. I think I must have been 4 or 5.

Magenta8. I have a memory "like an elephant" (according to my brother). Lol!

I remember living with my Nan when I was at primary school as mum worked. She used to tell me that of I was naughty that Dicky Potter would come after me, there was a curtain hanging up to cover a cupboard with storage and a step where she said he would come out and this scared me so much so I was rarely naughty just in case I see him.

I vividly remember an incident but more clearly when I pass a particular house. I was walking to our village shop which was some miles away and my grandad was holding my hand, I was 6. He said I am going to say something to that lady in her garden but I will have to hold your hand even tighter then. The lady called out a name and my hand got held so tight it hurt and grandad said ‘she’s gone’ and quickened his step. Poor woman cried and I hadn’t a clue what it was all about. Later I learned my beautiful Nan had died and poor grandad was finding a way he could cope telling people and using me as a support and a bit of a shield too. Every time I see that house, not often now, I see the woman again and my hand being squeezed.

One of the oddest things I remember is the beautiful pattern made on our hall ceiling by the light of the burning wick in a parrafin stove. It was one of the round ones that had a perforated top. The pattern of the top could clearly be seen on the ceiling at night (seven on a winter evening, when four year old me was on the way to bed).

I walked as slowly as possible through the hall and up the stairs so I could see this "light show".

My mum and dad dancing round the living room to a Glen Miller 78 on the record player, I sat on an old pouffe made of leather that was peeling, peeling bits off. I was probably about 4.
Visiting a great aunt who must have died before I started school, crying because I was scared of her and being told off for it.

Randomly:
Being terrified of pine/fir cones (no idea why!) and being almost sick with fear when we had a lift in a friend's car and they had some on the back parcel shelf that skittered along every time we went round a corner. My mum even took the weights off the cuckoo clock because they were shaped like cones and scared me. I would have been about 6.

When I was eight my father (RAF) was posted to Aden we were initially billeted in a private block of flats in Steamer Point. I went to the playground at the back and a little Arab boy tried to kiss me. I was scared and ran home but I didn't know which was our block, they all looked the same so I was outside screaming and crying till my mum came and found me.

Mum taking us on a picnic in a cornfield when I was about 6. The corn stalks poked through our picnic blanket and hurt!

Aden again; we were supposed to have a sleep in the afternoon but Mum let us get up early one time and on the kitchen table was a scrapbook for each of the 3 of us, along with pots of flour and water paste and lots of coloured paper for "cutting and sticking".

A long line of ants leading to my school satchel which I had thrown on the bedroom floor and which had biscuit crumbs in.

Walking back from church with my father, looking at the pinkish, sandy ground and him saying "If you don't stop upsetting your mother we'll have to send you to boarding school!".
I don't remember upsetting my mother but I was sent to boarding school when we returned to England (because I was a supposedly "gifted" child who needed a good education(!) ) and that memory only returned to me years later.

When I was 8 we,d just got back from being out for the day late evening a knock on the door a neighbour had a phone call (my dad refused to have a phone at the time) the call was informing them that my maternal grand pa had died.My brother who was 13 and I went to stay with the neighbour my parents drove to Newcastle on tyne.The neighbour had 2 sons of a similar age to my brother they were trouble,one day we had been out in their car just as they were going in to the house the younger of the two demanded that his mum give him 10 shillings she said no he pushed her against the window and got her arm behind her back and said give the money you old bag.she told her husband what he,d done when turned up and he just shrugged it off as he always did if they did anything wrong.

I can remember my first day at primary school, we didn't have preschool then (1950), and I can see myself trying to stop crying by playing with the top of my socks so that no one could see me! I think I then started to cry and my brother who was four years older than me was summoned to pacify me.

I remember waiting at the bus stop with my parents, brother and baby sister. My brother said I think we could get our heads through some railings. I of course put my head through and obviously got stuck. My brother tried to free me to no avail. Of course that's when the bus approached. My dad freed me as the bus waited. That was the end of my escapolagy career.

I was about 3/4, my dad dancing and singing with me in his arms to Doris Day singing Que Sera Sera. I haven't thought of that for years where're tissues.

I remember being out with my dad, and meeting a distant relative, whom I’d never met before. She asked my dad if I was ‘ their only one ‘, and my dad replied saying I was, and that they had lost a boy. I had never heard this before, and wondered how they could possibly have lost this boy, whoever he was. I would have been about eight. I eventually asked my mum, who explained that this boy had been ‘ born dead ‘ when I was five. In those days, it wasn’t always usual to explain that this event was going to happen in the family. I certainly knew nothing about it, and would have been surprised to suddenly discover that there was a new baby in the family.

My earliest memory is being in our local Church show, sitting on a boys knee whilst he sang Scarlet Ribbons in her Hair. I was 4. I remember feeling discombobulated as I had no idea what was going on.

Grandma70s

Unfamiliar things in my grandfather’s bureau - spills for lighting his pipe, and sealing wax.

My DM and DD had sealing wax in their desk. I nattered them to melt some and use DM’s signet ring to seal a letter, but they would never let me. It was red with a string through it like a candle that you set light to to melt it.

I think I must have been about 3, maybe 4. I's been wearing a white furry coat that my mum had made for probably a couple of winters and every week when we went to the butchers, he used to call me "snowball". I hated it being very shy. I was delighted to be allowed a red hooded anorak the next winter, knowing the butcher couldn't call me snowball any more - but of course what I got was "hello, Little Red Riding Hood". I just hid behind my mum!

I think sometimes something triggers a memory and it is then filed higher up in the brain and we revisit it more often. I don’t think we remember very accurately and each time we call up the memory we edit it a little bit. Brain plays tricks on us!

As a child, my favourite place was sat on my dad's knee while he rocked on his rocking chair.
He smoked a pipe, and and as his knees were chubby I kept slithering down onto the carpet and climbing back up again.

My mum liked curling my hair, which I hated. She had two curling tongues which she placed in the fire to heat up, then used to curl my hair. As one became cooler she exchanged it for the other which had warmed in the fire.

At the end of the war, before he was demobbed, my Dad was posted to Tyneside. MY Mum & I were billeted with a widow who lived in Hebburn which I thought was mis pronounced heaven. She had a grandson who used to take me out for a walk. I must have been only 3 or 4. I could reach my hand up to hold his hand but all I remember seeing was short pants. bare leg and knee length socks. He took me to the sweet shop which was one of the few buildings left standing. He bought Edinburgh rock which I didn't like. We went to the river over a cleared bomb site, to look for my Dad's ship. Back at our digs I used to ask the lady ,who became a complimentary Nana if I could play her pianola. Saying "can I play your anna, Nana"

I was 3, I had ran home and was sitting on the toilet in the caravan we lived in. (Early 50s housing shortage after the war) . A person knocked on the door to complain that I had bite her child. My father opened the toilet door to tell me off but my mother stop him because of my position.
I was sent to bed.
However, later another neighbour told my parents that the bigger boy was trying to drag me off my tricycle but it was too late because I had already been punished.

I recall a Christmas party while attending an old, Victorian-built primary school in Louth. It was held after the school day, so it was dark by then. The girls were told to go and spend a penny before the party tea. The toilets were at the top end of the playground, up a slope, but we knew our way even in the dark. However, when we got inside, it was a case of feeling our way about in the pitch dark to find an empty stall and calling out to try to find one that was empty. Our voices echoed against the brickwork. Some girls were too shy to reply, so you'd feel an open door into a stall and grope your way in, only to find someone's hair in your hands, and the girl already in there calling out indignantly. Actually managing to have a pee was a triumph... and probably messy!!... then racing back down in the darkness to the welcome brightness of the party.

When I was very small, we lived in Seychelles where my father had been seconded. I must have been about 3 when I tried to save my 1 yo sister from drowning only to get caught in the same set of waves..
I also remember being terrified, going to a neighbours’ house which had a trophy shark’s jaws over the front door. I thought it would fall on me and bite me!

Bizzarely, one came to me yesterday. We lived in one half of what was a massive house. In the other half lived a solicitor and his wife. I was always fascinated by the huge needles he used to knit dishcloths!!! They had an AGA, a black and white spaniel and the most brilliant bannisters for sliding down!! Have not thought of that for over 50 years!