Thunderbird the bird

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by RKDinOKC

I was 3 1/2 when I saw the big bird.
We had a dairy 2 blocks from our house.................

It was a couple of weeks before I started playing outside by myself again.

Alright, this is the sort of memory process I was just looking for. Sorry I posted before reading this.

My wife just showed me a photo of a juvenile/adolescent bald eagle, it is monochromatic (no white hood), all dusty grey looking. My guess is that this is what you saw.

Childhood memories can be very detailed and accurate, but are suspect to cause and affect misinterpretations and scale relationship failures because of normal brain development.

It is easy to mock and ridicule such stories, but a much greater challenge to understand them. Do you take the high road or low road? Depends on your personality.

[kach22i]

Here is one part of the scale challenge:

https://www.pinterest.com/najuett/drawing/


Here is the second part, cause and affect processing.

Case Study: When is Your Brain Fully Developed? - Teenage Hack

By research, brain development is the most crucial factor between the ages of three to five. This is the time when the child acquires its thinking capacity; memory, action and reaction understanding, and several other reasoning courses. During this period,

During this period, the brain develops the fastest and the strongest. Though, the development is not complete, but ninety percent of the brain develops till then. Hence, it is essential to keep your brain healthy: physically as well as mentally.

https://pumpkinperson.com/


I'd like to side-skirt the IQ thing and even problem solving ability of young children on this topic. The fact is your brain was in developmental flux at the time of this sighting. You will never experience such a flux again, only perhaps a degrading from something like Alzheimer's disease.

Just saying the context is not where you were standing, the context is your age at time of sighting.

[creaturecat]

could have been a turkey vulture? i encountered a stationary one while hiking. the thing flew away, it was monstrous.
bigly or big league, take your pick. : )

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by afterburn 549

I can remember stuff quite accurately from B4 the age of 2.
In fact, after 40 my memory is more of a jumbled mass of things later in life.
So don't discount childhood memories.

Playing the pessimist for a moment, how do you know your memories are accurate?

Have they been verified by others?

Photographic evidence to support?

As a note; shared memories can be as inaccurate as eye-witness accounts, and one influential person can sway the memories of others in a desired direction, especially if covering up a misdeed, a trauma is involved, or living a lie.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by afterburn 549

Yup.
Some people are able to recall from early on.
Others it is a blur.
Some can not remember their teachers from various grades.
Everyone has some useless talents it would seem.

My wife can remember things from her life at a earlier stage than myself.

Her sister cannot remember squat until a very late age.

In my opinion, my wife is smart, and her sister is stupid, but I cannot say if there is a correlation though.


What Your Oldest Memories Reveal About You
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/longing-nostalgia/201504/what-your-oldest-memories-reveal-about-you

Research has indicated that most people’s earliest memories, on average, date back to when they were 3-1/2 years old. Recent studies of children, however, suggest that our earliest memories are more likely to go back even further (Wang & Peterson, 2014). By contrast, research with adults suggests that people can remember early childhood memories back only to about age 6-to-6-1/2 (Wells, Morrison, & Conway, 2014). Researchers agree that few experiences before age 6 become lifelong memories.

Early memories vary widely in content: Play activities, injuries, and transitions (such as moving or changing schools) can all become events remembered into adulthood (Peterson, Morris, Baker-Ward, & Flynn, 2013). What types of events persist into adult memory may well reflect characteristics of our childhood, as well representing what is integral to what matters to us. For example, Canadian children were more likely to remember early experiences of solitary play and individual-oriented transitions, while Chinese children were more likely to recall family and school interactions (Peterson, Wang, & Hou, 2009).

[Crowbob]

My earliest memory is my mother giving me a bath in the kitchen sink.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

One thing for sure, Thunderbird the wine is bad stuff.

And if you drink enough of it you WILL see a thunderbird!

Originally Posted by creaturecat

could have been a turkey vulture? i encountered a stationary one while hiking. the thing flew away, it was monstrous.
bigly or big league, take your pick. : )

This would be my guess... turkey vultures can be huge.

On the central coast they have a series of volcanic domes, rocky hills a few thousand feet tall, I climbed to the top of one of them.

The turkey vultures love to circle and ride the updraft that comes off the row of volcanic domes.

I laid out on top of the dome and warmed myself in the sun, looking up there were a half dozen vultures circling (nothing unusual, see them around there all the time).I closed my eyes for a few minutes... when I opened my eyes the vultures were circling noticeable lower than when I laid down.

[RKDinOKC]

I don't remember absolutely everything that happened but have flash memories from events from when I was very young.

Remember being taking to the treehouse of the boy next door by him and my brother. I was taken to the treehouse and allowed to read comic books with them. I couldn't read the words in the balloons, but made up a story to go along with the pictures. They laughed at me because it looked like I was reading the comic book. Again before I was two.

My niece was born the day before my 2nd birthday. My dad drove me, Mom, and Grandmother from OKC to Gallup New Mexico to help. Remember waking up in a box on the floor behind the driver's seat with my pajamas on. My Grandmother was in the back seat as well. We were going across the Texas panhandle. I remember it because I did not want to put my clothes on because people could see in the windows while I was changing clothes.

Right after we moved when I was just over 2 Remember going back the the rent house to get one of my toys that was forgotten. It was a thin piece of pressed board about 2ft square with a metal castle in the middle with a working drawbridge. The board was painted with grass, brown roads, and a moat that went around the castle. Specifically remember there was someone living at the rent house and I was very happy carrying my castle board to and getting into our car.

Between when I was 2 and 3 I was limited to the amount of time I could spend putting my weight on my legs. An bad ear infection had gone to the where my bones were growing in one of my legs and the doctors solution was for me to stay off of it. Had lots of pedal toys. Tricycle, tractor, pedal car fire engine, etc. Also had a swing set. Parents used to take me for walks with me in a 2 wheeled cart. Remember going to the doctor and them having me walk down the hall and back while they watched to see if I was limping. I drawed a lot. Memory that sticks out from that time was mom telling me to go do something and me asking if it was okay for me walk to do it. I was in my baby bed, a bed with sides you could raise and lower.

Remember my first bicycle ride after my Dad took the training wheels off. I was 4. Rode it out of the driveway, across the the street and hit the neighbor across the streets car. I asked to have the training wheels put back on but Dad told me to just keep practicing.

Remember getting hit by a firework in the face on the 4th when I was 4. The neighbor boys shot a firework that was a fireball that zipped around zig zagging along the ground, it was called an "N" word chaser. It hit me in the right cheek. Before I was 5 those neighbors put up a stockade fence around their back yard.

My Nephew was born in Feb after I turned 4. My brother was in the Marines and stationed in Brunswick GA. Mom and I went on the train from OKC to Jacksonvile FL to go out so Mom could help. They rented an apartment over a garage on St. Simons Island. Remember riding the train out there. Sitting in a train station in the middle of the night in Mississippi while it was raining waiting for the connecting train. And meeting the conductors.

While in GA remember meeting the girl next door my age, Maria. And going on a date in the back seat of her parents car to go get Root Beer. Did the same thing with my girlfriend at home, Nancy. She was a year older than me. but she moved away before we went on the GA trip. Learned to write so I could be pen pals with Nancy. We were pen pals off and on until we were in Junior High. Not so lucky with Maria just talked a few times and went to get root beer.

Met some of the neighborhood kids on St. Simons Island while in GA and they got me in trouble. We snuck in and played on an in-ground trampoline a couple of houses over. The neighbor kids weren't supposed to play on that ladies trampoline. The old lady that owned the house told us there were snakes under it.

My Dad and brother drove out to bring us home from GA. Remember several parts of that trip as well. Stopped and stayed with some relative my parent knew in Tennessee. Called him uncle Mitch, but he was a distant cousin of theirs. Looking out his back picture window a deer walked by. He had a kid my age and he kept popping my suspenders. I did not like hime at all.

Also stopped at a place called Chimney Rock Hollow. I was very disappointed, it was just an old chimney made of piled up rocks that was all that was left of an old cabin.

That's just stuff I can tie to specific dates 4 years old an younger.

Did not get a wingspan look at the bird. I was looking from the east and it was flying north. But it was flying low and there was a car parked on the cross street that it flew over for size comparison. It did not have the head of a heron, buzzard, vulture, or condor. It was the shape of an eagle and there is not much of similar head and neck but red tailed hawks in Oklahoma, which I have never seen close to town or anywhere as big. The only animal shows on TV when I was 3 was Wild Kingdom. But I did go to the zoo. There weren't many birds at the zoo back then. Only flightless like the ostrich and cassowary. And I knew all those animals were from somewhere else.

Oh I also liked dinosaurs like many young kids. But it was not a prehistoric bird. It did not have a long beak with teeth like all the prehistoric stuff.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by RKDinOKC

I don't remember absolutely everything that happened but have flash memories from events from when I was very young...............

That's a lot of clear memories in my opinion.

This was clearly an important event in your life for your brain to keep storing it over and over again, providing new pathways of association for recall.

These pathways are essential for recall of old memories.

My story is as an adult. Ponder what it takes to make a vintage Porsche 911 driver with the Targa top off breezing down a country road at 60 mph to slow down and stop.

A few things could do this; a cop car, a fellow motorist in distress, and a giant bird on the roof of a barn.

Until you have had that third thing happen to you, you may never really understand.

[livi]

Originally Posted by kach22i

One of my oddest travel stories comes from Czech Republic, early 1990's.

I went for a early morning walk, walked for hours. Walked from small village to small town in upper Czech near the Polish border.

1. A cluster of trees (deciduous)/small woods with closely space trees. They were about three inches in diameter/caliper, but over 100 foot tall. Sort of like a bamboo forest.

2. I saw a large hare stand up on it's hind legs and look at me from about 80 feet away. It's ears were almost 1/3 of it's height and it stood up about five foot tall - HUGE.

3. The deer I saw was smaller than the rabbit/hare. Very spindly looking just like the trees, not a fawn, looked fully grown but it's back was only about 26-inches high. Beautiful markings (spots/stripes), look like an art project by the forest goddess.

Strange planet this place called Earth.

A kangaroo?

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by livi

A kangaroo?

Smaller than that, but larger than a wallaby.

If you read the link I posted and do the math:

1. 30" torso/body

2. 16" head/neck/ears

3. 16" legs up on end

Total = 30" + 32" = 64" and 60" is five feet.

The one I saw was full sized, and went from squatted rest (46") to partial full rise (maybe 56"). He did not stand all the way up as males can do fighting/mating rights.

I'm just glad after all these years to find out I was not hallucinating. We drank a lot of Czech beer (pivo) at the inn, and quite frequently.

[RKDinOKC]

It was when I was a LOT older that I saw TV shows and heard about Thunderbirds. That made me think of the huge bird I saw.