Notes On A Story

So, I read a story earlier from a guy who claimed to remember an attempted kidnapping from when he was around 9 years old.

He gave a lot of details in the story, all the way down to a full on conversation he allegedly had with the would-be kidnapper.

I’m frankly skeptical he could possibly remember that much about the situation, especially some 30 years later and most especially conversation-wise.

Given that people have hundreds if not thousands of conversations in their lives over the years, and knowing the mind isn’t like a flawless verbatim video recorder in regards to memory, my skepticism is reasonably warranted.

Anyway, the story is at the very least a good cautionary tale, regardless how many of the details are accurate in his retelling.

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Lemony Snicket’s & The Mandela Effect

Earlier, I experienced the “Mandela effect” in regards to Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events” movie. I’ll be honest, a great deal of the movie wasn’t how I remembered it, but in my defense, I hadn’t watched it in ages until last night.

The Mandela effect, a form of memory error, can occur for a lot of reasons.

Maybe I didn’t pay as close attention to it as I thought in the first place, or maybe my memory was simply skewed due to the intervening time, or a combination of both.

Notes On Conversations and Memory

Earlier, I came across an article where it was estimated that people speak about 7,000 words a day. That’d be a lot for anyone to remember.

To elaborate, if we do speak about 7,000 words a day, that comes out to around 2,555,000 words a year. I’ve heard some people claim they remember every conversation they’ve ever had.

I can say with the utmost confidence now that they actually don’t.

It would be a cool superpower to have though, if such were actually possible, wouldn’t it?