Memories

I was reading Hyperbole and a Half today (which is a blog that is amazingly hilarious: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ ) and I was marveling at how well Allie Brosh remembers her childhood.  

How she remembers detail and even her own motivations as a 4 or 5 year old.  And the more I thought about it, the more I figured she must make most of it up.  She can't possibly remember this much about her maniacal need to get cake when she was a toddler.  Nobody remembers being a toddler.  She would have to be some kind of freak.

So I asked a couple of my friends and started to realize that maybe I am in fact the one who is a freak.  I did some very basic research (meaning I typed 'what is the average age for a first memory' into Google) and discovered that most people say their first memory is from when they were around 3.  And I remember nothing about being 3 or 4.  If pressed I can maybe scrounge up something from 5 or 6.  Maybe.  

Which apparently is weird.

Anything that I think may have happened from elementary school back has a 50/50 shot of being something that my imagination has created based on a story that my parents told me or a photograph I saw.  I can't even be sure that I existed before 1988.  

My experience most closely matches the way characters in Sci-Fi movies describe the vague, mundane memories that have been implanted to make them think they had a childhood. 

I had a dog named Lacey, she ran away but I don't remember what she looked like.  We used to dig holes in the backyard for fun.  There was a secret passage way in one of the kitchen cabinets that opened up in my closet... I think.

None of the lame recollections that I have can be strung together.  Its like, instead of a video camera, I have a polaroid. 

I don't have any emotional connection to any of these rudimentary images and impressions either, much less any kind of understanding of how my child mind worked.  

This all leads me to the only logical conclusion.  At some point, in my early years, the original Heather died and was replaced by me, a clone.  

Or possibly some kind of really convincing android.  Maybe my parents are in on it or maybe they don't even know.  Maybe their memories of the incident have been replaced with some other, benign memories.

I'm a replicant.  Or maybe a Cylon.  Maybe there was never an original Heather.  Maybe I was just created in a lab out of stem cells as a 7 year old and implanted with the memory of that albino kid I'm pretty sure I was in first grade with...

Or, maybe my medial temporal lobe is just defective and that's why my episodic memory is for shit. 

Google!

But I think I'm a clone.