{"id":138,"date":"2008-03-10T09:05:27","date_gmt":"2008-03-10T01:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=138"},"modified":"2008-03-10T09:05:27","modified_gmt":"2008-03-10T01:05:27","slug":"childhood-amnesia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2008\/03\/10\/childhood-amnesia\/","title":{"rendered":"Childhood Amnesia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image497\" src=\"https:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/blog-childhood-amnesia.jpg\" alt=\"blog-childhood-amnesia.jpg\" align=\"right\" \/>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\u2019s a girl in her class who claims to be able to remember <em>everything<\/em>, even her birth as a newborn baby. I chuckled and replied while I imagine that\u2019s possible in theory, it\u2019s also extremely improbable. A one person in a few tens and thousands sort of thing.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, it\u2019s really interesting to think about it. At what age do we retain our childhood memories? There\u2019s actually a term used to describe such retention, but funnily rather than describe our ability to retain those memories, the term references our <em>inability <\/em>to. That term is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apa.org\/science\/psa\/sb-bauer.html\">Childhood amnesia<\/a>, and suggests that adults basically cannot remember incidents that happen in their first 3-4 years of age.<\/p>\n<p>What are my earliest memories? Well, the two earliest I\u2019ve 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anglochineseprimary.net\/\">Anglo-Chinese Primary School<\/a> at Fort Canning road near our church now. After school dismissal, I remember running to my late Granddad waiting outside the bookshop. He\u2019d wait for me every evening and then we\u2019d go home together with the school bus.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s the one I am relatively closest to, what with our discussions of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Transformers_film\">The Transformers<\/a>, or <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Command_and_conquer\">Command &amp; Conquer<\/a> whenever we meet. I wonder say 27 years from now when he\u2019s my age and my hair has all turned white will he remember this uncle who used to tell him how <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Global_Defense_Initiative\">GDI<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mammoth_Tank\">Mammoth Tanks<\/a> can pwn everything on the map in this old antique computer game.<\/p>\n<p>Oh man, I feel so old all of a sudden! <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_sad.gif\" alt=\":(\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s a girl in her class who claims to be able to remember everything,<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2008\/03\/10\/childhood-amnesia\/\">Read More<span class=\"cleanwp-sr-only\">  Childhood Amnesia<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","wpcat-6-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}