Will you share instances when you confronted the fallibility of your own memory?

Psychologists studying memory often run experiments on induced remembering and induced forgetting. Such alterations can be suggested by oneself, another person, or society. Elizabeth Loftus, for example, studies implanted memories. She did an experiment where she had a man’s brother say offhandedly “You remember that one time you got lost in a supermarket when you were little?” Even though no such thing had ever occurred, the experimenters eventually got this man to recount a very detailed memory of this experience. Through this experiment and others like it, psychologists found that suggestion from another person, and especially from an expert (the brother in this case), can cause the subject to generate memories that are not tied to real-life events. The control for this experiment was the mother, who said “You’re full of it” when non-experts (people outside the family – the experimenters in this case) tried to convince her that her son had once gotten lost in a supermarket.

Have you had an experience where you remember something a certain way, and then are confronted by evidence which proves that your memory is faulty? Will you describe it? If you like, I’d also love to hear your own ideas about why your mind got tripped up.

My answer concerns a self-induced remembrance: In the winter of my senior year in college I dislocated my knee. I remember playing with my dog and running around each other on a hilly field, and then she ran straight into my legs from the left side. I watched my left leg bend inward to the right, and I saw my kneecap jump to the outside left of my knee. Then the screaming, the cell phone call, my friend taking me to the ER, etc. etc. The weird part is that a few days later I realized that while I had (and still have) this visual memory of my knee jumping out of its socket, it was impossible for me to have actually seen it happen. I was wearing pants that day – my friend sliced the left pant leg up the side to look at the damage, and I still have those pants so there’s no way that that part is a false remembrance. It’s the sight of my kneecap sliding left out of my knee that has to be the induced remembrance. And yet I still have that visual available in my neurons; I’m playing it through right now. So weird.