Annie, you brought back a memory of mine that comes to me as visitors are about to leave. My Mom would say to them, "heres your hat, whats your hurry" and then laugh. For friends and family, I echo Mom's words often, just for her.

Every winter around the holidaze when the word "eggnog" pops up it takes me back to when I used to help my Dad make his homemade eggnog. I'd use a big spoon to stir the huge punch bowl as he poured in the ingredients.

It happens to me often, and for a long time, even when I was a lot younger. Most of the time the memories seem unconnected to anything going on in "real life."

It's not always possible to find the hook that retrieves some random memory from storage. Early this week my first thought upon waking was, "one-six-one-oh-R." It's our home telephone number, and I 'stored' it as a Kindergartener, to be able to recite it to the Operator. It was replaced by a totally different number within a year or two as our local phone company staggered towards automation. Now I'm wondering how many other bits of yesterday are gathering dust in my 'attic'.

I have been remembering a lot of things recently. I think my trigger is dd finishing up senior year and preparing to go off to college.

For no apparent reason.....I suddenly start thinking about this time, 43 years ago, yes this actually happened.... I'm leaving the grocery store...and I run into this guy..."Chuck". I knew from high school, 2 years since we graduated. He's with another male. He tells me I'm spoiled...takes 2 steaks out of my grocery bag...his friend gives them back. I leave.

I've played THAT back many times. It's very weird. lol I never considered myself spoiled...and yet...this guy saw me as "spoiled". ?? I had to work for everything.

Thinking it's at least partially related to the time of year. The old one just ended and a new one is beginning.

I‘m another with a dusty, memory filled attic. Here’s one that is very random but pops up frequently. I opened a can of tuna at my MIL’s house and proceded to drain off the oil (doesn’t everyone do that?). My MIL nearly had apoplexy, saying stop, that’s where all the flavor is! So now I can never open a can of tuna without hearing her words. When i had pets, I’d put the oil in their food.

Random & old memories are always popping into my head. It’s just the way my brain works…filled with minutia. It doesnt seem to be a curse; more entertaining than anything.

We never drained the oil from a can of tuna. Mom would always crumble up a piece of whole wheat bread into it to soak up the extra oil. I still make it that way to this day. When I got older I realized she was probably trying to stretch a can of tuna to feed four kids.

With my friend passing away this week, it has dredged up a lot of memories. One in particular was that we had a foreign exchange student that was around her son’s age. She was in high school and determined to receive a diploma from an American high school, which she did. She ended up going to 2 proms that year. One with a friend she met at her own school, and one with my friend’s son at his high school. Funny thing about social medial (FB), I have reconnected with her all these years later. She posted about remembering her & her husband on my post about my friend, and then about going to prom with her son. Sweet!

This does not happen to me much except in dreams. This morning I was dreaming about returning to my first university, but it looked very different and had a lot more students. I had to wear an ID name tag to walk on campus, which was never really the case there.

One of the strongest triggers for memories is olfactory sensations. If I smell newly mowed grass, all kinds of memories flood back, but I do not consider this random, since there is a trigger.

I don't have seasonal memories, and I frequently forget what month it is or what time of year it is. The exception is that I used to get depressed at Christmas - that's the worst time of year for me. Since we don't really celebrate Christmas anymore, I don't get the depression that goes with it.

Mom used to always say the same expressions over and over again...used to drive me nuts. For example if someone was struggling with something she'd say, "Great life if we don't weaken." When we'd arrive back home she'd say, "We're here, shouted the captain." And if you'd complain about something, she'd say, "Tough tittie but you got to chew it." And every morning when she'd come into my room to wake me up for school, she'd say, "It's a big bright brand new beautiful day out there!"

Annie, your mom sounds like a very positive person. My dad was like that, he would say to guests out at the driveway as he always made us walk them out. If I don't see you through week, I'll see you through the window. He had a Scottish brogue and a very merry man.

My mother did not speak in cliqués, but my father did. However, mostly ignored him.

One thing he would say when he wanted someone to slow down was, "Hold her, Newt - she smells alfalfa." I had no idea who Newt was, and we were not close to any alfalfa fields that I knew of, and so I just considered this to be nonsense. Much later Kevin told me that Newt was a servant driving a wagon drawn by a mule, but I believe that this saying is common in the South. I didn't know about the mule part of the story (and never asked about it), and I thought my father meant "She smell like alfalfa." I never asked my father questions because the less he spoke to me the better.

Yayagal, thank you. My Mom was always a very positive person to the end. She never missed a chance to celebrate and always took the bright side of every problem.

I do find myself reminiscing a lot more than I used to, especially if I wake up in the middle of the night and don't go back to sleep right away. I think I used to mostly think about tasks at hand or things current in my life. I don't know if that is because of getting older and partly coming to terms with my own mortality after losing Jody, but I think perhaps it is.

A very pleasant memory popped in my mind abruptly and popped out just as quickly recently. It was about a brief moment. It kind of caused me a jolt; It was not something that I remember thinking about ever before. it involved my mother or father, not sure. I wish I could tell you what it was about, but it is gone. Vanished. Such a weird thing.

Lars, I always heard it as "Hold her, Newt....she's going to buck."

Annie, you just reminded me of my mom waking me up with, "Good morning, Merry Sunshine!"

🙂 My mom would wake me up with “Good morning my little tuppence.”

I have these random memories pop up too. I think they’re like index cards in that big rolodex in my head - one gets snagged and falls out sometimes.

My dad, when he didn’t know what color something was, he’d say it was sky-blue-pink. Whenever I see a multicolor sunset that has blue and purple and orange and red and pink, I think of him.

That's an interesting way to think of it littlebug ... I like it 😁!

Lars, my grandfather would say "Hold her head up, 'Jud-dee', she smells alfalfa."

Usually in the context to tell us to "slow down."

Genealogy is something I've been passionate about for most of my life. When I get to working on the family members that I knew and loved dearly, I get sucked down into a rabbit hole and have to walk away for a long time. Then some random memory about them will pop in my brain. Sometimes it's comforting, sometimes it's painful.

I've filed away what Roxol said --"Memories keep a life alive."

Littlebug, thank you for saying that about your dad - I completely forgot that my dad would say sky-blue pink! When we were little and put to bed he would say "good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite". We heard "hold your horses" a lot from him.

My mother would wake me up with "Rise and shine!"

"Up and at 'em, Atom Ant!" ... haven't thought about that in ages. It was fun being a kid in the 60's, lol.

My dad said 'up & at 'em!' too. He used a lot of sayings from the 30s/40s.

Pudgeder, I know what you mean. Sometimes, you just have to back away from thinking about some people and take a deep breath.

I have those random thoughts, too, and I like littlebug's rolodex reference. It's a pretty good description of our brains, except I think mine is more like an overloaded file cabinet : )

When we were little and put to bed he would say "good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite".

That reminded me of when my son was about 4 years old. We had spent a weekend at his grandparents house. The first night after we got home he woke up screaming. All that he could tell me is that there was spiders under his pillow and they were biting him. I tore his bed apart looking for the spiders. After, he calmed down, I told him that I couldn’t find any spiders and that he must have been dreaming. He told me ”No, Grandma, says they are there.”

It finally dawned on me that my MIL would tuck him in and tell him not to let the bedbugs bite!

My father was a man with a huge and charming personality. Dinnertime at our house was a real anchor for our family, fun, educating, encouraging. I remember his telling a story about an egotistical man, whom he described as ”a self made man who loved his maker.” My mother, a minister’s daughter, would say ”hell’s bells and butterflies” when she was frustrated. When my brother would get a haircut, Dad would comment that he’d ”had his ears lowered.”

Everytime I would hug my dad he would say "whatcha want"...that was his way of saying Love You to me.

As for random memories I get them all the time.

DH says he has "Italian Alzheimer's" He's forgotten everything except the grudges.

As I was a the door, leaving her room at the nursing home, my DM and I waved goodbye and I said, "Good night. Sleep Tight. See you in the morning light." Those were my last words to her. The home called at 2 a.m. to tell me to hurry there to see her one last time before her body was removed to the anatomical research facility. She had been dying for many months from leukemia -- a similar form to the multiple myeloma that I can fight today because there's now treatment. Still, you're never *prepared* to see the body absent its soul.

There was no hospice here 44 years ago. I've been gratified to see my efforts and those of so many others to make it widely available. I was an only child, 37, married, with one son, aged 7 -- who doesn't remember his grandmother. My sole support was my DH.

So sweet chisue...much nicer sentiment than the bed bug thing. I'd not heard it before.

I fed the dogs this morning when I got up to use the bathroom and let them out. They usually wake me up, but I woke up first this time. When I got up later for good, I gave them some water and the broken bits of dog biscuits in one box they had almost finished. For some reason, that old cartoon from my childhood popped into my head, a flea walking down the road with a knapsack on his back singing, "There'll be food around the corner, food around the corner, food around the corner for me". I don't remember any other part of that cartoon, but that song is now going to be stuck in my brain all day.

Elizabeth, I laughed out loud. Just texted it to DH who is 1/2 Italian.