You know childhood memories....???

(source)

Yeah, those.

Thing is, I think I have (very, very, VERY) early onset Alzheimer's, due to the fact that I cannot remember much about my childhood. Bad. I know.

I can remember various things that happened when I look at photographs. So, essentially, my childhood memories are like information that has been stored somewhere in my brain but which doesn't really surface except when it is triggered by some external stimulus. (How is that for science-y!!) That means photos, a meal I have associated with a particular event, seeing the person who was involved in the particular event etc etc. Which I suppose is not that good, either.

The thing is that I always find myself at a disadvantage when I happen to be talking with my brother about something that happened long ago. My brother has this amazing memory storage capacity! He can remember everything. So, most of the times when his sentences start like "Remember when.........", I draw a complete blank. Sometimes I even end up remembering something completely and utterly different, which might have even been years after the event he remembered.

At times, I do wonder if there is something wrong with me, as I can never come up with memories just off the top of my head. But then, I feel better when I realise that my brain just works in a different way to others'. Where my brother has no difficulty remembering details (and I do mean details) of memories, I seem to be a lot better at storing masses of information in that big pile of goo. And by masses, I do mean LOTS of useless information, along with quite a bit of important info as well. (I'm not all that useless after all!)

But there is one thing that I do remember about my childhood very vividly.

Every time my brother and I were getting ready to go to bed, my dad would always come in to tuck us in. Just before he left, he always gave us a big, big hug and "sprayed" us with a bit of sleep dust, just so that we could go to sleep. It was all imaginary, of course, but I think both of us (my brother and I) always slept a lot better after a spray of sleep dust!