How truthful are our memories?

“We human beings are nothing more than the sum of our memories – combined with hopes and aspirations.”

For the last year and a bit I have been writing a tale of the community in which I grew up. The project was originally intended to be a tongue-in-cheek spoof of the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby and what it meant to me in my childhood and youth. It would be a kind of semi-history and community sociological smartass bit of sarcasm and (hopefully) wit, and nothing more.

But, as many who have turned their energies to the nasty business of writing what they hope might turn into a book have found out, these things have a tendency to assume a life of their own. What was to have been a spoof has become something of a memoir of an earlier time. And memoirs by their nature involve memories, and once I found myself getting down into memory-lane, as it were, things took off from there. One incident would suggest another; a recollection of an early love interest would cast my mind back to the person; a recounting of a day in elementary school would bring back the smells, sounds, and sometimes the anxiety associated with the situation. Anxiety that had been long since forgotten, I thought, but then realized that the same anxieties still permeate my being. I am the sum of my parts.

I’m now nearing the end of the project, and am doing my basic editing. But, there is peril in that, too. I will come to a passage and realize there is more to it than what I have stated, so everything ends up being expanded upon.

And, what of those memories? How many are true. I cite an incident that took place in my senior year of high school in which the students, weary of an ever increasing set of rules and regulations imposed by a heartless and lacking-in-imagination principal came close to fomenting a riot one spring day. As follows is the way in which I recount the event:

“It was at just one of those aforementioned Monday assemblies that the principal’s fan became dung-splattered and the repercussions were huge. It was in the late spring, as I recall. We had been guilty (we were always guilty in the man’s little mind) of some sort of new malfeasance, and therefore we were to lose yet another privilege. The audience greeted his decree with silence. And then somebody – I have no idea who – began to stamp his feet on the gymnasium floor. And then another picked up on it. The stamping grew louder and louder until, or so it seemed, the entire gym was stamping in unison. Nixon, a look of panic crossing his face, raised his hands and demanded our silence; he uttered threats; he told us our conduct was disgraceful and that we would pay for it; he even threatened to call the police if we didn’t cease the behavior. His face blanched as students began rising up from their folding chairs and started to approach the stage. The man retreated, and his place was taken centre-stage by the vice-principal who appealed to us to calm down. We did, sort of, out of a certain respect for the veep. He exhorted us to go back to our homerooms. We shuffled back, taking as long as we wished to reach those destinations.”

Did it really happen like that? In my memory it did. The incident took me directly back to the time and it seemed like I was reliving it. Maybe my memory exaggerates. Maybe it was nowhere near as dramatic as I indicate. I wrestled with thoughts about that for a number of years afterwards. Then one day, probably two decades later I became acquainted with a man who was actually Burnaby’s superintendent of schools at that time. I asked him about it. I told him of my recall, and wondered if it had come to the board’s attention. He responded thusly.

“I remember it well. We were very concerned. We saw a good school being destroyed, and not by the students, but by the very bad choice of the man we had picked to be principal. But, the good thing was, we were looking for an excuse to transfer him. The students at Central gave us that excuse.”

Aha – so I wasn’t suffering from false memory. It was roughly the way I recalled it. OK, then it shall stay as it has been recounted in the book.

And now I’ll carry on with my editing and my memories.