Baby’s memory

 

I read an interesting post on social media.

The poster’s older brother was a unique person. He still had memories from when he was a baby.

The poster has a baby. Babies cry very often. They cry when they are hungry and when they wet themselves. Sometimes babies cry for no reason. The poster’s baby cried so often without any reason. So, she asked her brother, “Do you remember why you cried when you were a baby?”

Her brother answered, “In my case, on most occasions, I had an itch on my head. We can’t scratch our own heads when we are babies, right?”

Now, the poster pats her baby’s head with a wet towel softly when the baby cries for no reason. Sometimes the baby stops crying.

Sometimes, adults pat small children on the head to comfort them. Most children love that. It might be because of the memories they have of being unable to scratch their heads by themselves when they were babies.

If this story is true, we all had the same problem when we were babies. But most of us forgot about it.

Humankind is cute.

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Picture by nagi

Period of Popularity

Moteki is relatively a new Japanese word. Some people talk about and believe that “everyone has at least one short period of life when one enjoys more romantic attention than usual.” That is moteki.

If those people are right, I had such a period of life when I was a kindergartener.

One day, when I was a kindergartner, a girl gave me a paper. It wasn’t a letter. Most kindergartners can’t write letters. Instead, it was a strange picture. I assumed it was a kind of colored paper, and I kept it in my treasure box.

A few days later, someone called our house. Then, my mother severely scolded me.

The paper I had been given was not colored paper. It was paper money. I can’t remember exactly how much it was worth. But I think it might have been a lot. I didn’t understand the situation, but I gave the money to my mother. I think she returned the money to the female kindergartener’s parents with an apology.

That was on Valentine’s Day.

On Valentine’s day it is a Japanese custom for some women to give chocolates to men they love.

The female kindergartner wanted to give me chocolate, but she didn’t know where she could buy it because our town is kind of rural. So, she decided to give me cash instead. Of course, she stole the cash from her parents.

That was my moteki. I was almost a bad male companion who gets female customers to steal money and exploits them.

Now, bad male companions are a social problem in Japan. These male companions take a lot of money from young female guests. Some female guests steal money to give the companions.

I did this half a century ago.

I have never experienced such a moteki again. I have never been given cash by other girls.

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Picture by poosan

Lost in an RPG

It is possible to say that I am part of the first generation of video gamers. When I was in the second grade of elementary school, Japan experienced the arcade game boom. We spent almost $1 just to play one video game. Young people might laugh about that, but at the time, we spent so much money.

Arcade games transformed PC games and home game consoles. When I was in my twenties, I stayed up all night for a few days in a row to play PC games. Young people might also laugh about that. I was almost addicted to video games.

Now I believe that I and video games have built a good relationship. I am not crazy about video games. On the contrary, I have discontinued many games. I can’t finish many role-playing games (RPGs). For several reasons, I quit many games for a few months or years.

Sometimes I thought, “I want to clear a certain video game and watch the ending scene because I spent money on that game.” Then I continued an RPG, but I couldn’t remember who I was and where I was. An NPC speak to me in a friendly manner, but I couldn’t remember who they were. Did I have any special abilities? Then I just walked around, but I walked in circles. When I wanted to recover, I couldn’t return to the recovery spot. Then I would die. I couldn’t remember anything. It is possible to think that Alzheimer’s disease might be like this.

I also replayed a major game company’s game. It always let me know the story so far when I played the game. When I had played the game every day, I thought it was annoying, but whenever I resumed playing after a long break, this helped me a lot.

When we talk to an Alzheimer’s disease patient, we should talk about the story so far again and again with patience.

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Picture by Mogutani