So, Sarah wrote about a conversation we had in the car today and completely mis-remembered everything with her own truthiness version that put me in a bad light. I'll forgive her this time, but I have to set the record straight with the "true" version (no truthiness involved, I promise). :)
Justin: Juma, when are you going to be old enough to do cool stuff with me like go paintballing?
Juma: When I'm seven.
Sarah: What? No way, seven?
Justin: I was that young when I got my first BB gun.
Sarah: I don't believe you--we'll call your Mom when we get home.
Justin: You call her and she'll say I was 15 just to make herself look like a better Mom!
Sarah: Seven's way too young.
Juma: Okay, nine.
Sarah: He's way too young, he'll cry when he gets hit by the paintball.
Justin: It doesn't hurt very much, Juma. Don't worry, you just have to make noises like, "Arrrrggghhh!" when it hits you. [Notice, please, that I said nothing of being a "man" or being "manly." Way too cliche.]
Juma: Arrrrgggggghhhhh!
Sarah: It still hurts.
Juma: Have you ever played paintball, Mom?
Sarah [sheepishly]: No.
Juma: Dad, have you ever played?
Justin: Yes.
Juma: Did it hurt?
Justin: Not very much.
Juma: See mom, you are a genius!
Either Juma was being sarcastic or he thinks genius means someone who pretends to know something she couldn't possibly know firsthand....
Now you can read Sarah's version. Keep in mind that anyone that spells it bee-bee gun automatically loses all credibility. Even if she edits her post to show things like this or this.
Memory is something I'm spending a lot of time on lately--it is a big part of the upcoming orals section of my PhD. I'm becoming more and more convinced that memory is more "created" than "recorded." (And yes, I create just as much as Sarah does.)
Do any of you have conversations that one person remembers totally differently than the other?
3 comments:
Justin
I think about this notion of remembered experiences often. It seems that the way we experience things is so altered by our past experience and current world view. This came up so frequently on my mission - most of my companions were from sub-sahahran Africa and we would walk out of a discussion and I would ask my companion how they thought it went; our perspectives could be so different as to be almost laughable. It always made me think about the "spirit". One of us would feel it thinking the discussion went fabulously well and the other would feel nothing. Interesting stuff. I'm with you on memory being constructed for sure. Okay - I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. I sure like you all.
I definately need to work on my memory. Nate and stephen (childhood friends) make up stories of stuff we "supposedly" did when we were younger and i just go along with it and say i have no idea. then they laugh and say it never happened. I really think we got the bad memory from mom.
cameron
I definately need to work on my memory. Nate and stephen (childhood friends) make up stories of stuff we "supposedly" did when we were younger and i just go along with it and say i have no idea. then they laugh and say it never happened. I really think we got the bad memory from mom.
cameron
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