this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Weirdly enough, people often don't recall flashbulb memories accurately. I have absolutely no idea where I was on 11 September. I have a memory of the event, but I know that my memory can't possibly be accurate, because I didn't live in the state where my memory takes place until 2-3 years after 11 September.
I’m completely positive about where I was and how it went down, but I’m also in NJ where we were affected more than most places. I was in school, my father was working in midtown Manhattan. I can still remember the teachers stopping instruction while they talked in the hallway. Even at that young age I remember being able to tell that something was really off. I was lucky enough that I was able to hear my dad was ok by lunch time but man, what a nerve wracking time. The craziest part was that my dad had just taken me to the observation deck of the twin towers just a few months prior on take your kid to work day.
I was on leave from the Navy, visiting my parents. Under other circumstances I probably wouldn't remember, but I remember waking up to my mom yelling at me to come watch the news. Then I remember watching the second plane hit. Then I got a call from my command asking me to cut my leave short. This was all before 10am central time after I was up drinking (illegally, but who is counting) until like 3.
I got a plane ticket for first thing the next morning. My brother and I drank and talked shit all afternoon, about anything except what was happening.
What's really crazy about the idea of flashbulb memories is how certain people are of them. I remember reading about one exercise in a journal--it might be the same one referred to in the article above--where students were asked to write things down about 11 September the day after it happened. A year-ish later they were asked about their memories; most had details incorrect, and some were entirely wrong, and even argued that what they had written down at the time was wrong, or it wasn't what they'd actually written down.
I'm positive that I remember the Challenger accident; I'm sure that I was watching it at school, since a teacher was on board (the first teacher in space!). The teachers were in shock when it happened; about half the students just shrugged and made shitty jokes (because middle school). But how can I be sure that my memories of that event are accurate, without some kind of contemporary record of them? Do I have details wrong? I know that when I talk to my parents, they remember things from when I was growing up very differently than I do.
Found this out when I was 18. I had some tightly-held flashbulb memories that I had built my entire self concept around. All of them were either so mutated as to have no reference to reality, or were provably completely fabricated. Suffice it to say I did not take this realization well. Did not help that I learned this three days after I had proven to myself that my entire belief system was 100% running on the placebo effect. I could have dealt with each of these fine if I had been able to deal with them individually, but getting hit with both of them like a hook-uppercut combo just destroyed me for six months. I suppose this is to be expected from having your identity scientifically disproven; I count myself lucky to have recovered with only a crippling fear of advertisements that I was able to work through in a mere four years.
Just to be clear, I'm fine now. This is all a distant memory, but it is to me where my current life began.
Pretty easy for most school aged kids to remember since they ended up watching the event in school all day. I was in 9th grade English class.
I was getting a filling done at the dentist. I was dropped off at school after.