Do You Have Any Strange Memories?

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!

Thanks for the memories. I have just had a fascinating time reading all of them. I just hope that nobody has been "triggered."

monami

I remember having kids, I wonder where they have disappeared to now I'm old

Oh, that's sad.

I remember where I lived as a child there was a small park opposite the house, there was a man who frequently sat on a bench and exposed himself to us kids, we were around 8, there was a large round flower bed with red geraniums in it, we sat on the wall surrounding the flowers and he came along ,sat on the bench and did his usual thing,we waited till he was exposed and we put our hands backwards into the earth and pelted him with geraniums clods of earth and run for our life's, he had to clear the earth etc and do himself up before he was able to try to catch us, he was very well dressed looking back, crombie type coat trilby hat ,mustache,I can still see him, I went back years ago and Oakley square gardens was much smaller than I remembered, no benches

Apologies for highjacking the thread a bit but whenever anyone brings up memories this is the one that always comes back first.

I have loads of random memories.

One particularly humdrum one is from when I was probably about three. I was walking to my grandma's house with my mum. Mum, looking at my feet, suddenly told me to turn my toes out. I still remember 'spreading' my toes out, inside my shoes. It was years before I realised what she had really meant!

I have so many similarly humdrum childhood memories that I could easily write a book, and I'm sure it would become a best seller if targeted at people who need help getting to sleep! 😁

This isn't a random memory as I'll never forget this. My granny's sister died and the furniture in the house was being cleared out. My ex husband and I had just got a flat and had virtually no furniture.I went with my mother to have a look and see if there was anything that we could use. We went to her house and into the bedroom. I didn't know my great aunt's coffin was in the room. My mother's cousin was describing the furniture and how well my great aunt had kept it. My granny was having an argument with her sister in the coffin and my 2 year old daughter was running around the trestles in a figure of eight. My mother kept saying what do you think, do you want any of it? I said yes and got out as quickly as possible. I had visions of my daughter bumping into the trestles and the coffin falling. It was the most surreal experience of my life. My 2 yr old is now 50 and I can recall everything about that day although I haven't thought about until I read this thread.

I am 67. I have two distinct memories. I can clearly remember me as a toddler in my pyjamas, sitting in a dark red wing back chair at my maternal grandparents house. I don't picture me sitting in the chair as in a photo. I remember sitting with the arms and the wings of the chair either side of me. If you know what I mean. My other memory involves my paternal grandparents who we lived with. Again as a small child, I remember on a Sunday morning I would go into their bedroom, climb into bed while my gran went to make a pot of tea. She would bring it up to the bedroom and we would all sit in bed, drinking tea and the best but was we all had a tunnocks tea cake. Only on Sunday's. Two of the best memories I have.

I remember vividly the day my brother was brought home after his birth. I remember the nurse with a Florence Nighingale headdress handing him over to my Mum in the front seat of my Dads car. No safety belts then. And the front seat for goodness sake. I also remember the exact position that my Mum put the pram in the garden. I remember hopping around for what seemed like hours waiting for him to wake up. I was 3.

Typing about the Bunty memory immediately sparked another one from about the same time. My mother used to run errands for an elderly gentleman neighbour who lived alone, and generally keep an on him. I went to the shop for him once (aged about 5 or 6) and to thank me he gave me a peach. My mum was watching out the window for me and saw me coming up the path holding the peach out in front of me. She said 'what have you got there?' And I said 'Mr McKay gave me a suede apple'. I suppose I'd not had a peach before! But I wonder - how come I didn't know the word for peach, but I knew the word 'suede'?

I remembered one week when I got my beloved Bunty comic, there was a free gift attached to the cover. It was a bracelet made of little white cubes with a "diamond" embedded on the front of each cube. I put it on the top of my head and pretended I was a princess and played all week with it. Next week I was still putting it on my head and went down to the newsagents to get my Bunty. (I was about 6 or so - can you imagine today's children going to the newsagent alone aged 6???) It was a tiny shop and there were about four women in talking to the shopkeeper. They turned to look at me and laughed and I put my hand up and realised I had left the house with my 'tiara' on. I was a very shy and self-conscious child so I was almost crying with mortification.

I remember my mum putting a nappy on me while staying with my grandparents. I was very upset about it because I was dry at night but she told me it was just in case. I don’t know how old I was, probably around three.

I remember having kids, I wonder where they have disappeared to now I'm old

It is strange what weird or humdrum things we remember and why our old age brains choose to remember them.
I remember being told off as a young child for taking too long to choose my sweets in the corner shop by the woman who ran it.She obviously had forgotten how important the choice was at age 5.
Of being frightened of the cellar and thinking something lived down there😲
Of falling down at the edge of the sea when paddling in Southend and getting my dress and knickers wet and bursting into tears aged about 6.

I remember sitting in a wooden high chair scraping at the dirt ingrained on the tray with my fingernails.
Also my mum bathing my baby brother in a baby bath in front of the living room fire, and a mouse ran out from the cupboard and mum jumping and spilling the water everywhere.

I have a memory from living in Germany in a block of flats (army), I remember two things, one was there was a large sandpit and play area and a man with one one leg. Second memory, a xx big basement in same block of flats, we were banned from entering as it was full of the boiler and electrical stuff, but the door was left unlocked so us army brats trooped inside,

It would have been just before my 4th birthday, I think.

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

Another random memory was of our teacher yelling and jumping on to her chair because there was a mouse in the classroom. We mostly found it funny although some girls were terrified. I was older, about seven then.

I also have a memory of an outside toilet at my nans. I remember one Saturday morning I must of been naughty as I had to do my sisters chore of scrubbing the stairs from our top floor flat they were wood no carpet and my sister telling mum I wasn't scrubbing but looking out the window.

Yes, I remember the terrible blizzards and waiting anxiously with my brother for our mother to come home. I was very young then.
We had a canary which I remember but it had died by the time I was four.

Seeing my Grandad in his leather armchair, wearing his black waistcoat and collarless white shirt. We had to go down the garden to the lavatory at their house. Grandad died when I was five.

Quite a few. I still remember getting lost in a peasouper on the way home from primary school in London. I felt frightened and had no idea that I was in someone’s garden.
I also remember going home to an empty house aged around 5 or 6,I had forgotten I was supposed to stay for a school dinner. It was quite a walk , a mile or so. I was very upset and unsettled.

... being put to the task...

I do. I phoned my sister yesterday to ask her whether she remembers put to the task of removing the shafts of chicken feathers with tweezers because my mother couldn't bear it if any were left in on chicken skin purchased for roasting.

She did! I must have been about 8.