Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 April 2008 11:09:11
I was right.
At least I still think I was. We had been asked to write something, the details of which now escape me, perhaps it was a dictation although that doesn't seem likely. Anyway, we had been asked to write something, and now we were asked to swap with the person next to us, and mark their work. So I marked the stuff my pal Sam had written. (At this point it seems worth pondering the fact that Sam was the only non-caucasian in the class and he was my best mate. At the time I thought nothing of that, but some years later, when I realized how unbelievably racist my parents are, I wondered at the seeming paradox that by being so pally with Sam I seem to have not inherited any of my parents bigotry. Maybe it really is a paradox (albeit one admitting a simple explanation, namely that racism isn't genetic). Or maybe my parents aren't actually as bad as I perceive them to be. Or maybe just racism is subtler than I'm giving it credit for. I suppose the typical racist holds that people of other races are generally bad (in racially-specific ways), but that there can be exceptions, and meeting one individual of a different race, getting to know them and like them and seeing that they are genuinely good, is entirely compatible with maintaining the view that their race are generally all bad. In other words maybe I'm just as unbearably racist as my parents.) So, I marked Sam's work. And in one sentence he had written "slooped" where, clearly, it should have been "stooped". The t hadn't been crossed, so I put a red cross by it and docked a mark. That should have been the end of the story, but later when the teacher checked our marking she saw what I'd done and told me off, because I'd put a cross where Sam had correctly written "stooped". I don't suppose I'd remember this at all if it weren't for the overwhelming sense of injustice I felt - injustice seems to be a fantastic aide-memoire. I was absolutely certain that the word had been "slooped" when I'd marked it, and either my memory was completely unreliable (a concept that, frankly, is way too hard to grasp for a primary school kid) or someone had surreptitiously crossed that t after I'd marked it wrong. It was such an easy error to correct, with no trace detectable, that I was pretty sure at the time that this is what had happened. And I think I still am. I think.
The trouble is that I've had this experience repeated in different variants fairly often in the intervening decades. I've had an absolute certain recollection of something which has later been contradicted by the facts. In that first instance there was another explanation (the t being crossed after I'd marked it), but in many of the subsequent times there was no such get-out. My memory was simply wrong. Somebody would ask me who did a particular job and I'd say it was Bob, because I know that it was. And then some incontrovertible evidence would appear to show that it was actually Fred. It's not that I can't remember - it's simply that I remember wrong. It's not an erasure in my memory, it's a corruption. My memory supplies the answer with absolute 100% waterproof confidence. And it's wrong.
I guess themes in my thinking at the moment are trust, and how to handle situations where you can't trust people or things, and memory, and how memories can dominate for good or bad. So what happens when you can't trust your memory, when it lies to you? Essentially memory covers everything I've done, everything I've learnt, everything I've experienced, everything I know and consequently, more or less, everything I am. And I can't trust it. It's not a nice feeling.