There was a segment on Marketplace this evening about the unreliability of memory. It seems that some researchers showed dozens of people photo-shopped images of news events past, and many of the test subjects conjured memories of them. Not only were they convinced that they remembered the fictional incidents, but some also recalled their emotional reactions at the time.
That doesn't surprise me in the least. As a bit of a memoirist myself, I know how slippery the past, even the very recent past, can be. My only defense, when challenged, is that I have presented the story as I recall it, and I claim to do no more or less than that.
Even so, someone else's faulty memory can be stunning. Once I posted a picture of me and my high school roommates. Taken in December of 1977, we are all wearing matching striped pajamas that one of the other girls in the photo gave us. It was a few days before Christmas break, and we had all immediately donned the jammies the minute we opened our packages.
What else would we do but take a picture? I recollect it so clearly: I propped my Minolta SR-T 101 on a chair and set up the auto-feature. There were 15 seconds on the timer, but on my way back to the group I tripped. As I rolled over, my friends grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up into the frame just as the shutter snapped. Of course we were all laughing.
Several folks from those days posted comments on the picture, including this one:
Actually, wasn't this taken the year I was there? This was taken in Karen and Liz's room. In fact, I'm sure I took the picture.
That's just not how I remember it.
That doesn't surprise me in the least. As a bit of a memoirist myself, I know how slippery the past, even the very recent past, can be. My only defense, when challenged, is that I have presented the story as I recall it, and I claim to do no more or less than that.
Even so, someone else's faulty memory can be stunning. Once I posted a picture of me and my high school roommates. Taken in December of 1977, we are all wearing matching striped pajamas that one of the other girls in the photo gave us. It was a few days before Christmas break, and we had all immediately donned the jammies the minute we opened our packages.
What else would we do but take a picture? I recollect it so clearly: I propped my Minolta SR-T 101 on a chair and set up the auto-feature. There were 15 seconds on the timer, but on my way back to the group I tripped. As I rolled over, my friends grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up into the frame just as the shutter snapped. Of course we were all laughing.
Several folks from those days posted comments on the picture, including this one:
Actually, wasn't this taken the year I was there? This was taken in Karen and Liz's room. In fact, I'm sure I took the picture.
That's just not how I remember it.
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