What We Remember

I wonder if this has ever happened to you?  Have you ever recalled a scene in a movie only to watch it later and realize your memory is wrong?  The classic example is from the movie, Casablanca.  The line, “Play it again, Sam” is never uttered by Bogart. My daughter and I misquoted a line from one of my favourite movies, The War. When put in a position where we didn’t want to do something we would quote, “I ain’t given no cotton candy to those Lipnickis.”   One year when we were re-watching the movie (a summer tradition), we realized that no one says that line in the movie!

This week I read about a 12 foot high fiberglass reproduction of Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy that was installed in London’s Hyde Park.  The sculpture was built to commemorate what the Brits chose as the most memorable moment in British TV drama – the scene where Mr. Darcy emerges sopping wet from the lake in Pride and Prejudice. In the BBC production, we never see Darcy emerging from or even standing in the water.  (I guess I will watch it again to verify this information!)

It makes me wonder, how often we have an impression of an event in our lives that we are convinced happened and it never did. We construct memories based on our perceptions of what happened.  Ask any siblings to discuss a family event and chances are you’ll get a different perspective – and fodder for a family argument down the line.

All this is a good reminder to me.  My memories are my interpretation of an event. They are not right or wrong – they are what I experienced as reality.  I can’t go back and re-watch an event. I can verify my perceptions with other people and I can be careful that I don’t take one version of a story as the truth of what happened.