Memory is a funny thing. If you reminisce with an old friend about shared memories, you’ll find that you both recall the same things, only different. You may find yourself recounting a vivid memory that actually belonged to someone else. Or worse, never happened at all. If someone told you a story when you were young, and told it to you often enough, chances are you’ll remember it not as a story but as an experience.
Ronald Reagan, as President, recited a number of remembered stories that apparently only happened in movies. And they weren’t necessarily his movies. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that unless you use an acquired memory as an excuse for....., I dunno, starting a war or sending someone to jail. I mean, if you’re going to start a war or send someone to jail, it should be a ‘real’ memory rather than a fictional one.
My dad told lots of stories about when he was young. He told me. He told my brothers. He told my children. He told them innumberable times. And he expanded on them over the years which is where I prob’ly picked up the habit.
I used to tell people that I was practically perfect in every way. That I had only one flaw and it was a very minor flaw. A teeny flaw. So small and insignificant that it was barely noticeable. The smallest of imperfections and I only mentioned it in passing because I didn’t want to mislead anyone. It could only have been a birth defect that caused me have the slightest tendency to exaggerate.
I undoubtedly inherited it from my father and it seems to have caused a tiny blip in the memory bank of my mind. I would have told everyone much sooner but, I forgot. Justin Other Smith
P.S. Ain’t Spring a wunnerful time o’ year?
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