Remember when you thought Mr. Monopoly wore a monocle, or you were convinced Curious George had a tail? Memory is a funny thing. 

Or how about when NBC anchor Brian Williams “misremembered” being in a helicopter hit by anti-tank weapons in Iraq? His faulty memory got him suspended. 

We all misremember things, but when an entire group does it, it’s called the Mandela Effect, a phenomenon that occurs when millions of people are confidently wrong. Like, remember when we all believed Vladimir Putin was a war criminal? LOL. Good times.

If you’re a Gen Xer, you might remember when the VHS tape got eaten by the VCR and you had to use brain surgeon-style techniques to carefully respool the video. But then the tape always had a wrinkled section where the movie would go wonky for a few seconds. That’s what my memory feels like most days: warped and staticky. 

My husband is basically a human computer. He remembers everything. When we meet new people, he lights up like an exploding star. He’s curious about their background, hometown and their connection to any celebrity-type person. 

Months later, he’ll say, “Remember at the Yankees game when we met that guy who was married to the cousin of a friend who knows Ryan Reynolds? I think his name was George.”

“No.”

“Yeah, you do. He owned a horse farm outside of Albany and loves the color orange.”

“What are you talking about?”

His memory recall is slightly unsettling. He’ll drop info like, “I remember the 1968 World Series when the Detroit Tigers came from behind to beat the Cardinals. They hadn’t won since 1945 and Mickey Lolich was the MVP.” 

And then there’s me, having to watch a recap for a TV show I watched the night before. But then I remember random things, like when Sen. Mike Lee advocated for term limits. Hahahaha. The good ol’ days. 

I was playing a “Frozen” matching game with my 9yo granddaughter, trying to remember where the pair of Olafs were hiding. I kept turning over the same two cards, a Sven and an Elsa, convinced I’d finally cracked the code. 

My granddaughter found it hilarious watching her doddering old granny lose a game. But there was a time I was the matching game champ. At least that’s my recollection.

I can still sing Abba’s entire “Arrival” album from 1976 but I’m not quite sure I actually attended a single day of high school. I used to know dozens of phone numbers, but now I couldn’t call my daughters if the world were ending and I had to use a rotary phone. 

When it comes to remembering the names of dogs I met at the dog park, I’ve got it down. But their owners’ names? No clue. I can make my mom’s mac and cheese by heart, but need to read the directions on a cake mix four times before I get it right.

It makes me second-guess my memory, like, do you recall when Gov. Spencer Cox took the side of trans kids? Or was that also the Mandela Effect?

If you’ve ever had a sibling contradict your side of a story, or you can’t remember your eighth-grade science teacher, you’re not alone. Or maybe you had an existential crisis when you realized C-3PO’s lower right leg was silver, not gold. 

Memory isn’t just fleeting, it’s fluid. When time blurs the moments we fell flat on our faces, it’s a reminder that our flashbacks are edited highlight reels, usually with a laugh track. 

Peri Kinder is an award-winning columnist and journalist who has written for The City Journals since 2004. She can be reached at [email protected]