I've heard that every time you remember something, you changed the memory, like add to it emotions and OTHER memories you have each time you recall it.

I have some that I've had so many times over I'm sure the neural pathways are now set in stone. The brain is weird like that.

Every time I am on the freeway I think of this guy that used to be the rep for a film-house the place I worked used. Film houses became obsolete as printing went direct to plate in the 1990s, so this tale is particularly poignant. This guy was the owner of the business, desperately wanting to expand the business so when film was made redundant his business would survive. I temped for him for a couple of weeks, during that time I made an ad for truck curtain tensioners. When I see a truck on the freeway, it makes me think of the time I answered the phone and Dave was calling to see if I could work for him, I heard a beep (and coupled with his quavery voice) it made me ask him if he was calling from the hospital he said YES. He got so sick from stress he had collapsed.

Nivea makes me think of an old housemate I have called Annalisa, BOY have I got stories about her!

If I see Addams Family, it makes me think of my friend Neal who told me his ex once brought home a soft porn DVD by accident called Madam's Family

Do you have weird memory triggers like that?

Yup. Weed reminds me of a girl I dated in Florida.

But oddly, so does CK-1 cologne/perfume.

If I hear the song "Walk like a Camel" by Souther Culture on the Skids, it reminds me of rollerblading drunk with friends, and heat.

For me it would be smell and music that trigger the most memories....I'm sure for most people it's the same.

The warm, moist smell of balls in pantyhose reminds me of dancing.

[Edited 8/19/11 7:38am]

lavender1983 said:

For me it would be smell and music that trigger the most memories....I'm sure for most people it's the same.

I used to have a perfume (obviously some cheap shit fitting for a little girl) that probably wasn't so nice, but I LOVED it because it made me think of an old wasps nest in my grandma's boathouse. I would sneak down to the river and hide in there, no sound apart from my own breathing and the river rushing past

lavender1983 said:

For me it would be smell and music that trigger the most memories....I'm sure for most people it's the same.

chocolate1 said:

lavender1983 said:

For me it would be smell and music that trigger the most memories....I'm sure for most people it's the same.

Yes. Today I was ordering coffee from a cart on the street, and the woman next to me was smoking. The cigarette smoke smell instantly took me back to the early '70s, when I was a little kid, and riding in a car with my mom and a friend of hers. The friend was smoking. That's really all of the memory that I have, but it was vivid.

Even though my parents didn't smoke when I was growing up, I have a ton of smoking-related memories. Back in the '70s and '80s, so many people smoked that the smell was almost everywhere. And then in the '90s, I started smoking. So cigs can definitely trigger a million different memories for me.

I just rambled on for two paragraphs about smoking....

Efan said:

chocolate1 said:

Yes. Today I was ordering coffee from a cart on the street, and the woman next to me was smoking. The cigarette smoke smell instantly took me back to the early '70s, when I was a little kid, and riding in a car with my mom and a friend of hers. The friend was smoking. That's really all of the memory that I have, but it was vivid.

Even though my parents didn't smoke when I was growing up, I have a ton of smoking-related memories. Back in the '70s and '80s, so many people smoked that the smell was almost everywhere. And then in the '90s, I started smoking. So cigs can definitely trigger a million different memories for me.

I just rambled on for two paragraphs about smoking....

If I taste creamy soda I remember being taked to the fair by a couple of kind of tipsy people in a VW. I have no idea who they were! I don't know what possessed my parents to let drunk people take their child on a 20 minute drive but the cool thing is they bought me "läsk" which I'd never had before I remember the label had gold foil and was basically awesome

I also think of donald duck when I smell chocolate pudding powder and think of the beach under pine trees when I taste pear flavour. I also think of an elephant.

When ever I see or hear some one say Jack Daniels, I always get a flashback of my great uncle passed out on the carpet, his shirt stained with sick and a bottle of JD half empty by his side. I was about 4 or 5 when it happened and I didn't understand the effects of alcohol It really scared me then, I thought he was dead.

I also often think of a glue that came in a grey triangular bottle with a grey lid.

The smell was heavenly

any swedish orgers can help me sort out my memories?

purplemonster04 said:

When ever I see or hear some one say Jack Daniels, I always get a flashback of my great uncle passed out on the carpet, his shirt stained with sick and a bottle of JD half empty by his side. I was about 4 or 5 when it happened and I didn't understand the effects of alcohol It really scared me then, I thought he was dead.

ugh! that's awful!

THAT reminds me of David Hasselhoff eating a hamburger off the floor

lavender1983 said:

For me it would be smell and music that trigger the most memories....I'm sure for most people it's the same.

Yup! Same here! Those are about the only two things that trigger my memory. Otherwise, I don't remember much of anything.

ZombieKitten said:

purplemonster04 said:

When ever I see or hear some one say Jack Daniels, I always get a flashback of my great uncle passed out on the carpet, his shirt stained with sick and a bottle of JD half empty by his side. I was about 4 or 5 when it happened and I didn't understand the effects of alcohol It really scared me then, I thought he was dead.

ugh! that's awful!

THAT reminds me of David Hasselhoff eating a hamburger off the floor

I forgot all about that video! It brought me into hysterics when I first saw it. Also that Britney video where she kept burping and shouting, I'm glad she's back on track now

purplemonster04 said:

ZombieKitten said:

ugh! that's awful!

THAT reminds me of David Hasselhoff eating a hamburger off the floor

I forgot all about that video! It brought me into hysterics when I first saw it. Also that Britney video where she kept burping and shouting, I'm glad she's back on track now

I was always too scared to watch it the vids of Britters I've seen are when she lapses into mysterious english accents when running away from the press

Hearing "Summer Breeze" instantly brings me back to being 7 or 8 years old and driving to the Upper West Side every Sunday to visit my Godmother.

ZombieKitten said:

lavender1983 said:

For me it would be smell and music that trigger the most memories....I'm sure for most people it's the same.

I used to have a perfume (obviously some cheap shit fitting for a little girl) that probably wasn't so nice, but I LOVED it because it made me think of an old wasps nest in my grandma's boathouse. I would sneak down to the river and hide in there, no sound apart from my own breathing and the river rushing past

Awwww

I don't know if you've ever seen the animated feature Anastacia...about the princess of Russia or something...There's a scene in there that I can relate to regarding grandmothers and smells.

Anastacia doesn't know her grandmother is Queen of Russia which makes her princess and thinks she is just an orphan so she sets out to find out who she really is...before she finds out though, the scent of peppermint triggers a memory of her spilling perppermint oil on her grandma's rug and her grandma singing to her with a music box and being in a castle and so on......

My nana was obsessed with vanillla oil...she used it to make soaps, scented candles, for massage, pretty much everything...so everytime I smell vanilla I think of her and have vivid memories of helping her make soaps..or sitting on her lap while she read to me because she always smelled of vanilla....just many really vivid memories like I'm watching a movie in my mind..that I don't think I would have remembered without the help of the scent.

ZombieKitten said:

purplemonster04 said:

I forgot all about that video! It brought me into hysterics when I first saw it. Also that Britney video where she kept burping and shouting, I'm glad she's back on track now

I was always too scared to watch it the vids of Britters I've seen are when she lapses into mysterious english accents when running away from the press

Hahahah! That reminded me of Madonna's 'englishy' accent

ZombieKitten said:

I've heard that every time you remember something, you changed the memory, like add to it emotions and OTHER memories you have each time you recall it.

This is why, years after he developed his famous acting system (which is based on something called "sense memory"), Stanislavski basically disavowed it. He said sense memory wasn't reliable precisely because our memories (and how we feel about the events in question) change over time.

Sidebar: I've studied both descendants of Stanislavski's system - Method and Meisner. Both can be useful - but I tend to work Meisner most of the time. He felt that most actors are, if not actually introverted, then introspective. Sense memory causes you to go deeper into yourself, which is the last thing most actors need to be told to do. The greater challenge is to get them to turn outward - so they act and interact more in concert with their fellow actors.

Anyway...I also happen to have a very strong sense memory. Case in point: Years ago, I was driving home from another town in Wisconsin - and decided to go through the town my paternal grandparents had lived in. I actually went downtown, to where they lived in an apartment over a shop. I remember opening the door from the street and looking up the long flight of stairs I had climbed as a child. The smell of the hall was exactly as I remembered it. And suddenly, I could see my grandma (who died when I was 5) throwing open the door to their apartment and coming to the top of the steps. And I started to cry.

chocolate1 said:

lavender1983 said:

For me it would be smell and music that trigger the most memories....I'm sure for most people it's the same.

Definitely

My two main things that trigger memories are the smell of the water they use to water the landscaping on the sides of the freeways in California and the smell of the inside of any U.S. military building.

Genesia said:

ZombieKitten said:

I've heard that every time you remember something, you changed the memory, like add to it emotions and OTHER memories you have each time you recall it.

This is why, years after he developed his famous acting system (which is based on something called "sense memory"), Stanislavski basically disavowed it. He said sense memory wasn't reliable precisely because our memories (and how we feel about the events in question) change over time.

Sidebar: I've studied both descendants of Stanislavski's system - Method and Meisner. Both can be useful - but I tend to work Meisner most of the time. He felt that most actors are, if not actually introverted, then introspective. Sense memory causes you to go deeper into yourself, which is the last thing most actors need to be told to do. The greater challenge is to get them to turn outward - so they act and interact more in concert with their fellow actors.

Anyway...I also happen to have a very strong sense memory. Case in point: Years ago, I was driving home from another town in Wisconsin - and decided to go through the town my paternal grandparents had lived in. I actually went downtown, to where they lived in an apartment over a shop. I remember opening the door from the street and looking up the long flight of stairs I had climbed as a child. The smell of the hall was exactly as I remembered it. And suddenly, I could see my grandma (who died when I was 5) throwing open the door to their apartment and coming to the top of the steps. And I started to cry.

my grandma's attic still smells the same now as it did 35 years ago, STILL the moose steak smells waft up there and hang for days sounds unpleasant, but it isn't. The sound of the creaky doors, the feel of the soft dog fur coat. Every time I immersed myself in these things as an adult, as nice as it was, dissolved the magic for me

lavender1983 said:

For me it would be smell and music that trigger the most memories....I'm sure for most people it's the same.

yeah

countless songs remind me of things, both good and bad. same with smells. sometimes i randomly smell something out of the ordinary and i suddenly start thinking of something i havent thought about in years... because thats what the smell made me think of. the other day i smelled something at work that smelled JUST like i remember my grangran's house smelling. not bad but just different.

also, does anybody else get grossed out when you smell food.. but you know theres definitely none around?

The smell of pot, a certain perfume and songs remind me of a certain someone Other smells take me right back to places in my life like school back in kentucky.. or whatever

Sometimes the smell of coffee in the morning can trigger all the way back to when I was a little tiny kid taken to the doc's office by my mom in the morning cuz I got the flu, and the smell of coffee.... and it makes me nervous!

There are a few things that remind me of my grandparents and summer trips to see them

smell of mothballs--my grandma is big on them, and I never knew that was the smell until years later. It's not a good smell, but it is a nostalgic one for me. Her whole house reaked of them

heat and humidity--they live in north carolina, and my other grandparents live in Chicago, so summers there are pretty humid, too

the buzzing of insects--again North Carolina

ufoclub said:

Animated green frogs remind me of Mr. Toad’s wild ride at Disneyland, when I was 8, I went there with my girl scout troop, my aunt was the leader. Early in the day I got separated from the group, and I remember thinking, I’ll be damned if I was going to sit in lost & found for hours waiting for someone to come get me and miss all the fun stuff, so somehow I linked myself up with this very young couple, I don’t remember what I said to them, some lie I know, that had them take me on a lot of the rides til the end of the day, where we ended up bumping into my aunt as we were coming out of Mr. Toad’s Wild ride. She was so pissed at me, but I didn’t care I had fun with these people I didn’t know. Poor kids, they had to be real young too, sweet though, strapped with a little strange kid all day. Everytime I've gone to Disneyland since I think of it too.

The smell of Crayola crayons reminds me of being a kid and coloring at my grandparents

house. It has to be Crayola, and when i smell them i remember one particular moment. the old

folding tray she used to fold open and the strawberry shortcake coloring book. I see myself sitting on the couch i remember everything in the room.

ZombieKitten said:

ufoclub said:

Sometimes the smell of coffee in the morning can trigger all the way back to when I was a little tiny kid taken to the doc's office by my mom in the morning cuz I got the flu, and the smell of coffee.... and it makes me nervous!

One of the reasons I don't like coffee is because my family used to go away a lot, staying in motel rooms. My parents would make their coffee and have their morning bms. The mingled odours of both is what I would wake to. once I nearly vomited getting on a swissair flight, they waft welcoming coffee bean smell through planes as you board. Luckily later they gave me chocolates

"morning bms"

wait.... what?"

Do you mean what I think? Is this a cultural thing... the term "bms"?

ZombieKitten said:

If I see Addams Family, it makes me think of my friend Neal who told me his ex once brought home a soft porn DVD by accident called Madam's Family

I've seen Maddams Family. Cousin Tit was hot.

sextonseven said:

ZombieKitten said:

If I see Addams Family, it makes me think of my friend Neal who told me his ex once brought home a soft porn DVD by accident called Madam's Family

I've seen Maddams Family. Cousin Tit was hot.

there is a pinball machine at a pub we go to of Addams Family, I told Neal that since he told me his gf brought that home I ALWAYS think of it, so I was sitting there at dinner looking at that thing CRYING with laughter, and of course Neal always does when I does, so there was no hope for either of us