I recently was asked to write about my memories of high school for a site someone had started for those of us who attended in the 60s. I wrote about being head cheerleader, student body president, editor of the yearbook and homecoming queen, not to mention getting 1600s on my SATs--
You guys probably suspect that this may not be perfectly accurate. But reality is a pretty flexible thing when it is based on memory. And I like those particular memories, even if my old friend Phyllis did email me and say she still had her homecoming crown and who did I think I was kidding.
Anna Quindlan writing about her memories of her father, said that it wasn't who he was, but who she remembered he was, that was important. (Of course, she wasn't running for office.)
I may have been sitting in English when the principal announced over the intercom the president had been shot, while someone else missed the announcement because they were in the bathroom, and heard it from a teacher crying in the hall, but there is a basic truth at the core of both those memories.
And the point of what I wrote (because I really wasn't student body president- hey, I dated him- isn't that close enough?) was that these memories are based on our own unique view, filtered through the experiences and thoughts that are uniquely us, and there should be no surprise when there are large differences between our individual memories. It is collectively that we become the truth and reality of those years.
At this point, opening up all the records seems to me the only way to add anything solid to the debate. We have reached a point of diminishing return on the individual memories and only hard facts (who wrote what, who signed what) might reveal the basic truths at the core of the differing realities-- or fantasies. |
