Posted on by Cathy

Did that really happen……

Over the years I’ve often thought about something and wondered ‘did that really happen’ – was I there or am I remembering someone else’s recollections that might have been mentioned in passing. My memory sometimes plays tricks with me and on the odd occasion I’ve actually (in a nice way) been proven wrong. Which doesn’t do much for your self esteem when you think you’re ageing quite nicely.

Anyway when we were younger (1950s) and went over to visit family in Belfast we always stayed with the same aunt. Of Dad’s sisters she was the one who had the room to put up another family….basically doubling the amount of people in her house….now that’s what’s called love.

At the time there were 3 of us girls and 3 girl cousins and the words ‘6 in a wonky bed’ keep cropping up in my mind but I don’t remember it actually happening. It’s what family did in those days but I can’t see (in my minds eye) us top and tail in a big bed.
I’ve no idea where Mum & Dad slept or Aunty Maudie and Uncle Herby slept but it’s where us 3 girls and the 3 girls cousins spent the night that’s been bothering me.

I had a surprise early last month when a cousin contacted me on a genealogy site – he is the ‘baby brother’ of these girl cousins, he was much younger than me so we didn’t actually ‘know’ each other which meant lots of newsy notes have passed to and from each other. He mentioned he’d forwarded them onto his sisters and this came back from one of them:-

Tell Catherine my memory is 6 of us sharing a bed when they stayed with us. xx”

When I passed all this on to my next sister this is what she came back with:-

Memories of Finaghy. Definitely the 6 in a bed plus the uncertainty of the springs dropping through the frame and us ending up on the floor. 

So it looks like it did actually happen.
I’m still wondering though if my memory has been sparked by others talking about it..

How do you go with memories…..are yours real?
or second hand passed on by others who were also there?

26 Replies to “Did that really happen……”

  1. Hari OM
    Memory is based on our perceived experience – which can be the polar opposite perception to that of another person in the same situation at the same time. This is why police take multiple statements because no two will ever be the same, but there will be sufficient common material to draw conclusions. I cannot telly you how many family feuds have arisen because one sibling is determined that ‘it was like this!’ and will not accept that there might be other points of view! YAM xx

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  2. I don’t have many memories of much at all when i was a child, very few. never even thought that the few I have might be false. finally, something I will not be worried about, because if they are false it doesn’t matter at all…. what concerns me is bob and i have been married 39 years next month and we argue all the time about memories he has that i do not remember at all and things i remember that he doesn’t remember at all. so now I am wondering who is right? we will talk about something we know happened and each of us IS RIGHT though telling a different story. who knows maybe all the history books are wrong

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    1. Well now as you say who’s to know which side was right when they retold the story about the xyz battle. Lots would have been documented but wonder if they were doctored as well. Nobody left to tell

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    1. A camera is a great accessory at times. I know it happened because I have it here in ‘black & white’. No disputing the fact – except the camera angle might not be just right

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  4. I am always surprised that my memories and my brothers’ memories of the same incident often seem completely different.
    I am the eldest so mine have to be the accurate ones!

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  5. Did that happen? Was I told about and a so called memory was planted? As I age I increasingly realise how unreliable the memory can be. Six to a bed! I do remember being two to a bed at times.

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    1. Ah well we were just little people so three at the top and three down the bottom was ok for a few nights. Bit of foot wrestling went on, a little kick here and there but all good friends in the morning

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      1. That’s when it all made sense – 2 was a way of life for some families….3 a necessity. Take care over the next weeks Carol, need you to arrive all in one piece.

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        1. Amen to that. LOL One day at a time and there have been times when it’s just one moment at a time. So strange to have my energy level go sideways the way it does. One day I’m close to being normal and then voila! Nada, nothing. When I ‘hit the wall’ and run out of energy/strength/breath, it’s like I’m an empty shell that can’t even think. Then I have to sit down and just ‘be’ for a while to rejuvenate. Never have experienced anything like this before.

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    2. Many people just don’t know how lucky they were. To save space my two youngest boys slept top & tail for a few years. We moved a wardrobe sideways across the room to provide a little bit of a ‘separate room’ effect for the third son who had his bed in the same room.

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  8. Your first paragraph really hit the spot for F. There are something that she ‘remembers’ occasionally that can’t possibly have happened but the image in her head looks and feels like a memory. She wonders if dreamed up stuff can do that. Her ex had a theory about his strange recollections – there are two brain cells, one is on essential life support duty and the other runs the filing system. The filing system is not essential and brain cell No 2 can take a rest from time to time, but when brain cell No 1 needs a break, brain cell No 2 takes over essential life support. If that is waking time – all filing and file retrieval is on hold. That’s when you can’t remember the name of the lead singer of that band you saw live in 1988… If in your stress over that lost memory brain cell No 1 steps in and pokes around in the filing system you end up with card files all over the floor. It is only later during No 2’s clear-up of that mess that you start getting all those other strange recollections as it picks up odd cards and goes “oh will you look at that! We haven’t had that card out for years!” And you wake up in the middle of the night from the weirdest dream….. remembering something you had been dredging around for weeks ago.

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    2. Looks like I’m going to have to review my filing system. Also sounds like No 1 & No 2 both need a pay rise if they’re to keep up with the ever changing state of my mind in the memory dept.

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  11. Yes that has happened to me. I recalled visiting a farm and where it was. I’d be about 8. Fast forward 50+years. My friend recalled the farm visit and produced a photo with six children, whom I didn’t recall being there. We then disagreed to where the farm was. Her mother fortunately confirmed my memory of location. Both of us half right! We fed lambs looking at the picture, which I’d also forgotten. I just remembered a scary big bull.

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