D's been listening to a lot of "This American Life" and comes home from work full of stories about stories. One is about a British guy who has a distinct childhood memory of being thrown in a lake by his friends because he's fat. Turns out, after a series of reunion-related interviews, he jumped willingly into the lake because that was what they were doing, jumping in the lake. His plumpness, in the minds of his friends, had nothing to do with his ending up wet.
Which got me wondering if I have mis-remembered facts from the past, which I hardly seem to remember anyway. But the shocking moments, did they happen for the reasons I think they did?
-- In seventh grade, I surprisingly slapped my best friend out of total confusion when a bunch of people gathered around to tell me, teasingly but playfully, that Danny liked me. I guess I was super excited? (I remember, we "went together" for a total of 7 days.)
-- I distinctly remember my kindergarten teacher mocking me to the entire class because of a silly mistake I made on an assignment (I remember the assignment too). Can that be right? Kindergarten teachers don't ridicule 6-year olds, do they? Even elderly midwestern kindgarten teachers named Schultz -- it just can't be.
1 comment:
This was still the 80s, though, right? Kind of the cusp of teachers doing fewer horrible things. I believe I was publicly described as a "turkey" to my second grade class in about 1985. I still bear the emotional scars.
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