There’s something about school memories that makes them so vivid and long-lasting, it feels like they happened yesterday. The classic ones like leaving home wearing slippers or failing a math exam usually come back in a sweaty nightmare. Miscellaneous memories like stealing a scented marker from your classmate arrive with a flashback. More emotional ones like an auntie picking you up all worn-out after another day at school can be triggered by a sharp valerian scent that reminds you of her.

But the most peculiar thing about these experiences is that they’re both too specific and too weird to digest. That’s why, when Twitter users started sharing their personal flashbacks from elementary school, people came to the conclusion that we all lived in the same childhood.

Pandas, if any of the posts below ring a bell to you, don’t forget to share your personal take on elementary school in the comments. And after you’re done reading this one, keep going down memory lane with some more school nostalgia here and here.

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Typically, our earliest memories begin to form at around the time we’re 2 or 3. From this time on, kids learn how to express their inner emotions and make a coherent sentence. However, there are some dark spots in our memory when it comes to the age of kindergarten or elementary school. Scientists believe that childhood amnesia is to blame.

As soon as you become an adult, it becomes virtually impossible to retrieve early episodic memories. It seems quite paradoxical because the human ability to retrieve childhood memories shouldn’t deteriorate with time if the brain is functioning well and one could be described as healthy.

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Modern theorists explain that the key to forgetting lies in the early development of the brain itself, because infants are able to recall information for weeks or even months. The amnesia of early events occurs suddenly over a period of two years, and the younger you are, the more likely you’ll forget things from early days. However, the tendency to forget slows down with age.

With every single reminiscence, we make a repetition in our brain that allows us to keep the episode longer in our memory banks. Walking down memory lane every now and then turns out to be an excellent way to keep the precious moments locked in our brains!