So years ago, maybe in our early twenties, my sister and I had an idiotic argument about which one of us had been at a particular Celtics' game in Boston Garden years earlier when Jamie Farr had also been in attendance. If you are a rational sentient being you are now asking yourself: Jamie Farr? The guy from MASH? Who gives a...as I know my father is reading this I will say for his sake "rat's ass." But you know what I mean. I mean, really. Was this worth an actual fight?
To up the idiocy factor, neither of us had ever watched MASH. It was unclear how we were both so sure we even knew who Jamie Farr was. And we each, to bolster our case, tried to get our father to somehow determine who had been with him at this basketball game a decade or so before, because--in the moment of this fight--it seemed essential to be proven right.
Now to be fair to us, it generally seems important to be proven right in the heat of an argument. And as the famous aphorism goes, "Sometimes a Farr is not just a Farr." Oy. Another line I should strike--not that clever, and the necessary "not" renders it inaccurate as a pun--but I'm still at about 75% percent and don't have the energy to rewrite. What I mean is, and I am assuming you saw this coming, is that this fight had next to nothing to do with Jamie Farr.
Tonight, over dinner, Ben, Caitlin and I, each of whom grew up with one same-sex sibling close in age, found ourselves having a discussion about how two people, in identical circumstances, will emerge with different, often vastly so, recollections of said circumstances. I once wrote that siblings were like citizens of a country nobody else inhabits, but I neglected to add that said citizens did not have a collective memory.
This is true of general sense as well as minute detail--and it is not always the general sense that provokes the most dissent. (Case in point: Monsieur Farr.) This seems like stating the obvious, again, but what interests me is why it feels so essential, so necessary, to dig in one's heels and defend one's point of view. I will confess that even writing about this I am pushing away the pointed poisonous little thought bubble containing the words: It was me! I was the one who was able to map where he was sitting! She had him on the wrong side of the stadium!
I had to stop for a minute to flagellate myself, at least in theory. I am going to have to come up with some kind of behavioral modification device invoking Farr's face whenever I find myself venturing into the sadly familiar territory of the pathetically immature. But almost always when my memory doesn't converge with Alison's I find this well-trod ground beneath my feet because, I am realizing, if her memory, version, story doesn't match mine, it somehow throws mine into question. And our memories, our stories are, for better and for worse, nothing less that who we actually are.
Identity again. It always rears its singular little head. It shouldn't matter, should it? The way I saw, felt it, remember it, should be enough for me; why is there something to prove, so much as a crack for doubt to slip into to? If not those, why then the need for assertion, debate? I have always had a visceral loathing for converters, always seen them as weak and desperate. One of my heroes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote that to believe what was true in your own heart was true for all people was genius. As much as I aspire to live by much of what Emerson believed to be true, this always makes me think: And there but for the grace of god goes egomania. But in terms of the courage of your convictions, sure. And by and large, this I think I have.
Except. Except for when it comes to growing up, to my memories of growing up, of the places and people that so powerfully shaped who I am in every imaginable way. Why does it needle me when Alison asserts that she, not I saw Farr, or that I, not she, garnered the lion's share of parental attention? Why, when I know full well the truth, for that last part, anyway, is multifaceted, does vary with perspective?
I'm starting to ramble, know the signs by now, so I'll revisit this more coherently another time, I promise. The notion interests me.
Final note. I wish the "Suicide is Painless" MASH theme song weren't playing along, quietly, insistently, to my indignant righteousness right now. Along with an equally steady backbeat of: Who does she think she is? The debate continues. Sibling: Sharer of childhoof memories or thief of narration? To be continued.
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Here’s how I know that memories are faulty. The year after I graduated college, I visited my sister in Australia. When she finally convinced me to drive, I had to get used to doing so on the left side of the road. On one 100 degree day, we took a day trip to the beach, and afterwards I drove home. Early in the course of that return trip we were bumping down a rural two lane road when we came up behind a much slower vehicle. It became apparent that I had to pass. This meant overtaking the car ahead on the right, a concept completely alien to all my instincts, (visions of head-on collisions dancing in my brain). I remember it now; the winding tarmac speckled with yellow kangaroo crossing signs and twisted eucalyptus trees, the parched grass waving on both sides, and me accelerating with my heart thumping. Most of that is probably true. But every time I visualize the scene, I am passing the car on the left, not on the right as it should have occurred in Australia. And when I see myself sitting in that car, leaning forward, forcing myself to depress the gas pedal, I am always seated behind the wheel on the left side of the car, not the right which would be the case in the “land down under.”
Go figure. It happens that memories often repeated by others become a part of our own perceived reality. But on the other hand it’s possible that the original premise is lacking. Just maybe, Jamie Farr attended two games!
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