False Memory, Induced Memory and Suggested Memory:
The Complexities of Determining the Truth

Norman Simmd

Personal Memory. Back in Boro Park, Brooklyn in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Our Gang of boys aged around eleven and twelve used to rent a locker at Washington Baths Annex on the board walk and go as often as we could.

We did everything together, defined ourselves by what we did and remembered, but not everyone did the same thing. Nevertheless whether you were there or not, you did and remembered the same thing.

Even if only you went away for a few days or a week with your parents to the Catskill Mountain or the Adirondacks, when you came back, in order to integrate back in the group you had say what they said and remember what they did.

Five or six might be there on Stillwell Avenue, buying drinks at the Soda-Mat or ordering Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs and French Fries, everyone said they did that: because that is what we always did. The one or two who were away, were soon back together, and everyone spoke of what we did together. Sometimes the away-nik added some details from his own memory, so that too became part our shared adventure; because we always did things together.

If I went away to some hotel or lodge, then when I got back it didn’t take long for me to know and remember everything the Old Gang would have done, and I had the same memory as everybody. That I had been in the mountains with my parents and sister, so that was something different, a different memory. Not only that I picked up new jokes, anecdotes and amusing tales, as my father would say, or crazy puns my mother would make up, or even antics my sister would perform, but they would gradually slide into the collective narrative for the gang as we rode on the BMT subway to Coney Island and back to Boro Park. 

They all became our memory. The same happened with somebody else’s family tales. Each new joke, pun, anecdote rubbed against the other as we giggled our way through the day. The more we wriggled around, the smoother it became.

By the end of summer we returned to school and family tradition, the more of this summer became like that of all the others we could recall and laugh about. By the next summer, any contradictions, anomalies or incoherencies started again.

Meanwhile, as we grew older by another year, our stories at home were about parents and siblings and our jokes, puns and anecdotes were about school. The summer brought birthdays and bar mitzvas, and we were ready to rent another locker at Washington Annex Baths.[1]

 

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[1] This is based on a number of little “Almost Very True Tales of Boro Park” I have written over many years.