Childhood Amnesia

We were driving home from work a week ago when Ling popped this question: at what age do we start remembering things in our life? Apparently, there’s a girl in her class who claims to be able to remember everything, even her birth as a newborn baby. I chuckled and replied while I imagine that’s possible in theory, it’s also extremely improbable. A one person in a few tens and thousands sort of thing.

Either way, it’s really interesting to think about it. At what age do we retain our childhood memories? There’s actually a term used to describe such retention, but funnily rather than describe our ability to retain those memories, the term references our inability to. That term is Childhood amnesia, and suggests that adults basically cannot remember incidents that happen in their first 3-4 years of age.

What are my earliest memories? Well, the two earliest I’ve got is one where my dad brought my elder brother and myself walking along Bras Basah road after catching Star Wars at the old Odeon cinema in 1978 (or was it in 1977?) when I was 6 years old. The second is during the same year when I was a primary one school boy, and attending Anglo-Chinese Primary School at Fort Canning road near our church now. After school dismissal, I remember running to my late Granddad waiting outside the bookshop. He’d wait for me every evening and then we’d go home together with the school bus.

Ling was musing about this in the context of how our two nephews, Danyel and Issac, will remember us. Especially Danyel actually, since of our three nephews he’s the one I am relatively closest to, what with our discussions of The Transformers, or Command & Conquer whenever we meet. I wonder say 27 years from now when he’s my age and my hair has all turned white will he remember this uncle who used to tell him how GDI Mammoth Tanks can pwn everything on the map in this old antique computer game.

Oh man, I feel so old all of a sudden!