Memories you know aren't accurate

I remember an art exhibit at the ICT in philly that was like, petri dishes of bacteria that would be super dangerous if something happened and they were exposed to the air.

fell into a lagoon and had to flee a hammerhead

The time Grizzly Adams and I had a conversation on the couch at my grandparents' house in Memphis.

I remember pissing in the hallway of a hotel lobby once after imbibing ungodly amounts of Tanqueray but I feel like it was a hallucination because I wasn't escorted out of the building afterwards.

Touring the White House at age 4, in association with an aunt's visit.

all of them

About 15 years ago my dad and I on a driving trip stopped by the house my parents lived in when I was born. They moved when I was 6 months old, so I have no conscious memory of having lived there. Anyway, my recollection is that when we visited it on this driving trip, we went up and looked in the front-door window (no one was home), and the house was in fine shape but completely empty. Like, someone had just moved out and nobody had moved in yet. But when I mentioned this to my dad last year, he said no, we did look in the windows but it was fully occupied -- furniture, decorations, etc. I believe him, especially because it seems unlikely that it would have been sitting there empty. But my memory of looking in the front door and seeing this empty house is very clear. Now I think I dreamed that, maybe on the same driving trip, and the dream replaced the actual memory because it had some kind of personal mythological resonance -- returning home to an empty house.

it's not a new thought but i think just about every memory is distorted in some way. more so for some people than others.

xpost

i "remember" things about the home my family lived in when i was born, but moved out of when i was 9 months old. like being pushed on a stroller around a nearby pond, or the little patio thing that ran along one side of the flat. i have no other memories until im about 3 years old (an early one is going to buy coal with my mother and then falling asleep on her lap in front of the coal fire - that memory is real according to my mother). the things i think i remember from being a small baby could all have been taken from photographs in the family albums.