Andy Schrom, GATE teacher
"The weirdest thing that happened to me has to do with suppressed memories. Here is the story: When I was three years old, I was at the Pitt spring football game that had ended. The weather was extremely hot and humid and my family was outside the stadium talking with old college friends. One of those people was an overly obese guy and he was standing next to me.
As a very young kid not involved in any of the conversation, I was just observing everyone and looking around. As I looked around, I noticed the obese man next to me "didn't look quite right"; at that moment I saw his eyes roll up into the back of his head, go totally white, and he started swaying. The next thing I know, I was watching him fall directly on top of me. At that moment, everything was dark and the guy was lying completely on top of me....dead as dead could be. Everyone was going nuts and I remember seeing the light from the sun as they lifted his body up to pull me out. While I was being carried away, I looked back and saw the guy laying on the ground with a trickle of blood coming out of the corner of his mouth. I remember feeling at the time that he was not alive. This was the case; he had suffered a massive heart attack and was dead before the paramedics arrived. The weird part to this story is that I suppressed this memory for many years and it wasn't until I was nineteen years old that I remembered it. I remember asking my Mom about it to see if it really happened and she confirmed that it did. I vividly remember the look on her face as I asked her about it....her response was: "We've been waiting 16 years for you to talk about this...we figured you had forgotten about it." Obviously, I hadn't....I just needed to be ready to remember. I retold the story as I remembered it to my parents and they were stunned at how accurately I retold the story.
As a psychology major at the time it confirmed what I already knew....the brain is an amazing and fascinating thing!!"
