The Wonder Years (Part 2) - Filling in Time

On the heels of my most recent post, my dad and I were discussing how often people remember seemingly concrete events differently.  It reminds me of the classic sitcom theme where everyone recounts a story line, spinning it in a way to make themselves look like the hero.  File this under funny, but true.  If I learned nothing else from my philosophy classes, it is that perception is not reality, even though perception absolutely shapes future events. The latter is what people mean when they say “perception is reality”.  However, in real life, memories are often augmented by the subconscious, in order to rationalize and make sense of situations.  And we know that our perspective changes dramatically as we mature.

 

I too, have noticed after discussing some of my memories in detail, my recollection of the “full story” doesn’t always make perfect sense or jive with others who've experienced the same event.  I have become more aware, the older that I get, that I tend to subconsciously fill in missing pieces of my memory with what I think are logical or probable events.  It really makes you think about scientists who do the same thing in their research. The science fiction book Jurassic Park was based on filling in the missing genetic code of the dinosaurs with frog DNA.  Our brains may not use complicated algorithms, but for sure we do try to complete what is sometimes a puzzle for us.

I’m pretty sure that I have also been guilty of combining separate but similar events.  I don’t always acquiesce, but certainly do acknowledge that I may not remember all the facts perfectly.  A nod to the concept of absolutes suggests that even though we may both be mistaken about certain events, it is indeed impossible for us both to be absolutely correct if we disagree.

It is truly humbling to discover you have gotten it wrong.  I try to remember these times and learn from them.  My buddy Mark and I possess similar sports memories, although his starts a bit before mine, ha!  I watched so many Dallas Cowboys games as a kid, that I am full of specific memories about them.  I once convinced Mark that I was right about a play in which Walt Garrison was kept out of the end zone by Ken Houston of the Redskins on the last play of a Monday Night Football game.  I convinced him that the two hit helmet to helmet and there was a standstill just short of the goal line.  I then saw a replay sometime thereafter, which clearly showed that Mark was right to begin with, that Ken Houston was holding on to Walt Garrison’s waist in order to keep him from scoring a touchdown.

I also recently recounted the capture of a snapping turtle (see picture in Wonder Years Part 1 post) that I thought my cousin Kenny shot. Dad relayed another time that Kenny had shot a turtle, oddly some ten to twelve years after the one to which I was referring.  Moreover, I lived in Dallas and was not present at the time of the second turtle incident.  Was Kenny the lone gunman or was there as second shooter?  Only J. Edgar knows for sure, but he could not recall.  So neither one of us could remember how we caught the original turtle nor how it was landed, but figured it possible that I subsequently heard the Kenny story and attached it to my turtle.  Just as long as we don’t use turtle DNA to fill any perceived gaps in the JFK assassination.

For the record, I do not subscribe to any conspiracy theory for the same basic reasons as hinted above.  How are we filling in these gaps of information?  Furthermore, though we understand basic physics, are we so sure we know it all now?  We once thought the world was flat.  The pristine ketchup incident of 1997 opened my eyes.  I dropped a plastic squeeze bottle of ketchup from the kitchen table some 8 to 10 feet from the refrigerator.  It landed directly on its bottom with lid flipped open.  No harm, no foul.  Upon returning the bottle to the refrigerator a few minutes later, I noticed fresh ketchup on the far side of the unit, the one closest to the wall.  How on earth did that occur?  I could see the ketchup making it that far, yet how did it get on the other side. I suspect air current from a vent had something to do with dramatically changing the direction of the rogue condiment.  Or...... a four-year old Mike could have squirted it there when I wasn’t looking.  

When I was four, I do remember watching the funeral of our fallen president on television.  I specifically recall the white horses pulling the caisson.  I was upset, probably a cue I took from Mom.  I deflated my football with a sewing needle and threw it down to the basement because I was ashamed of having ruined it.  Mom claims I did this because I was so distraught over the funeral.  There could have been some truth to this, but still think I just wanted to see what would happen if I stuck a needle in it.  I was, perhaps, just experimenting with basic physics.  I will say that the more I learn about the Kennedy assassination, the more I seem drawn to the aura surrounding that day in history.  Indeed, visiting the Sixth Floor Museum, formerly the Texas School Book Depository can be an emotional experience.    

It is clear that even our most recent experiences can affect our perception of the past.  Filling in time, we are.  And at times, past, present and future seem to be one in the same.  This is the only way I could ever make sense of the John Calvin and Presbyterian concept of Predestination.  Our life is like a book.  It exists at a single point in time, yet if you read it, it takes time.  Freewill suggests the book isn’t finished.  For sure, the beginning affects the later chapters.  Perhaps the rest of the book also affects the beginning.  It sure does in our memories.

I had many books as a young boy.  Several were from the Golden Book series.  My favorite of these was The Sky.  I was apparently fascinated with heavenly bodies.  I mean the sun, moon and stars.  Dad, Dianne and I experienced a real heavenly body of sorts, an awe inspiring natural event one Fall Sunday evening.  Our collective memories are still processing the circumstances, but either on the way, or from church, at dusk, the entire northern hemisphere lit and glowed the brightest orange.  In a tenth of a moment, a huge fiery ball occupying what appeared to be most of that north sky, screamed towards the earth. My god, the sun must have fallen!  Dad thought it might have landed only a few miles away. I believe he read in the newspaper that it landed somewhere in Canada, several hundred miles away.  To think people get excited over meteor showers.  They have no earthly idea.

My Golden Book became real after I'd seen that meteorite.  What also seems real to me is hearing music in my head when I sat on the front porch steps of my Denver, Indiana home reading the book.  What’s truly weird is that the music I think I was hearing wasn’t produced until 1969 and later.  I had not discovered it until the mid-seventies. The music was that of the original King Crimson featuring Greg Lake and a later incarnation of the band which had John Wetton as the vocalist. Aha, another case where future events are linked to the past, a variation of Déjà vu perhaps.  It may also be that the music reminds me of the moon and stars.  Certainly the use of the mellotron, a keyboard instrument used to play preset strings has that feel. Whatever it is, those Crimson songs are pinned to my Golden Book experience and my Wonder Years.