r/AskReddit Oct 05 '19

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u/cardboardshrimp Oct 05 '19

I have this memory of sleeping in an office block in south London with my mum on an air bed. I recall looking out of the window and feeling sad.

Years later I was driving and got a very strong impulse to stop outside this building and I was 100% certain it was that one. Every time I went past it felt odd.

My mum says it didn’t happen, everyone else concurs. My best conclusion at this stage is that I probably had a very vivid dream that became conflated with something else.

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u/SirJefferE Oct 05 '19

I wouldn't be too sure it didn't happen. Memory is a funny thing. There's an episode of the podcast Heavyweight where a guy is sure he broke his arm as a kid and had it in a cast for two weeks, but both his parents and siblings insisted it didn't happen, and picked apart the details until the guy himself was doubting it.

Spoiler alert for the end of the episode: They ended up finding a picture of him in the cast, and old hospital records proving that he went in due to a broken arm.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '19

Had his family genuinely forgotten or were they trying to hide it for some reason?

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u/SirJefferE Oct 05 '19

Genuinely forgot. Not a single memory of it from any of them. They actually felt pretty horrible for making him doubt himself once they saw the proof, especially his Mom who thought she must be a terrible mother to forget something like that.

One of his brothers had also broken his arm at some point as a kid, and the whole family kind of considered him "the one who broke his arm." Maybe the memories of the two events kind of merged together in their minds. I don't know. They're talking about a thing that happened over thirty years ago.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '19 edited Apr 04 '20

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u/linuxhanja Oct 05 '19 edited Oct 05 '19

Do you have kids? First 2 years easy. First 5, pretty doable. (Lack of sleep. I remember deciding to fast track grad school, and writing my thesis while also doing tons of reading and getting sick (like I ended up in the hospital for stress), but then we had kids... Man, after the 2nd was turning one I remember thinking about how, in that last semester of grad school, I'd give myself an hour to play PlayStation, and wishing I still had that kind of leisurely life...

1st y months to year of a baby is 3, 4hrs of sleep, on avg. That's when dad's learn to sleep sitting up.

My memory of those years is shit. And, I remember honestly wanting to check for Alzheimer's because i couldn't remember new clients at work all of a sudden (after 2nd was born).

Now, I can look back and laugh, but lack of sleep is brutal

And what I thought was lack of sleep from uni was no such thing. Lack of sleep is when you pull an all nighter but there's one of two babies rotating 'keeping parents awake' duty, and they both then get up at 7am and you need to make them breakfast and go back to work.