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Friday 24 February 2012

Avoiding false memories

I can remember every one of the days of the last two months, since beginning this process.

The fact the past does not change certainly makes it easier.

However, buzzing back through three months of Thursdays yesterday to reconsolidate those memory tags, I hit a blank when it came to 12 January.

As it was a Thursday, my wife would have been attending a college course. Taking and/or collecting her from college figures in every Thursday, even if this is not involved in the specific memory tag.

So somehow that must have been part of the day. But using that as a prompt to recall my memory tag felt like trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole. I just knew there had been a radically different image for the day.

I don't worry anymore when I hit these blanks.

I have learned that remembering will give me a buzz so rather than panicing, I tell myself relax 'cos there's a buzz coming.

It was the conviction that it was a very different sort of Thursday that reminded me in the end.

It was the one time I hadn't been in town to take my wife. I had gone to the Capital for a meeting. My memory tag for that day was riding a hire bike across town to the train station to make my way home. I was back in time to drive to pick up my wife, but the bike ride was my memory tag, now reconsolidated on my mental calendar.

It would have been easy to just drop in a generic sort of trip to my wife's college and create a false memory.

I have learned from this that I should trust the feeling that a memory is not fitting and not invent must have beens.

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