Apparently, I Was There 😳

Over the past month and a half, five friends have reminded me of shared moments that occurred fifteen or more years ago. Unfortunately, I had completely forgotten them.

A friend from my years in the police department explained to my girlfriend how I helped him while I was the union president. I barely recalled the incident from more than twenty years ago. I certainly had not thought about it since it occurred.

Another friend, this one in the real estate community, reminded me of how I stopped a physical confrontation between him and another broker. My memory of that moment was fuzzy at best (like looking through cotton).

Yet another friend shared a story of how I visited him while he was in the hospital following an unfortunate event. Total blank. It was like hearing the story for the first time, except he kept telling me what I said and did. He described what I was wearing back then including a Navy pea coat. An Army man in a Navy pea coat? Yeah, that was me in my thirties.

Confused. Conflicted. Colin.

There were a couple of other friends with shared memories that I couldn’t remember. No need to recall them since you got the point after the first one.

Most know about my father’s battle with dementia so you can understand why I was worried by this string of lost memories. Two follow-up conversations helped put me at ease.

The first was with the friend who reminded me of the hospital visit. He said, “Colin, you’ve had a lot of changes in your life over the past fifteen years. Big changes. You’re not going to remember everything. Give yourself a break.” I really appreciated him saying that because I felt like a heel for not recalling the visit to the hospital.

The second was from my work friend, John. I was telling a story of him and me to another person, and he had no recollection of the event. Turnabout is fair play, I guess. The story I shared is a favorite memory of my daughter when she was younger and John was a big part of that moment. In a weird way, I was happy he forgot. It made me feel better about my own forgetfulness. **

Maybe it’s age-related, but I hope not. Maybe it is because I’ve had many major life events occur over the past two decades, but we’ve all had that. Anyway, I’m not going to worry about it too much anymore.

Have you ever experienced a bout of forgotten memories?
How did it make you feel? Did you do anything different because of it?

This post originally appeared as a VIP Newsletter.