I often wonder how in the world my sister can adamantly say that she is telling the truth when she does not remember stealing my shirt or using my makeup a few weeks ago. Or how she does not remember that one time she slapped me for taking a cookie that she wanted when we were little. It seems as if she is blatantly lying to our mom, but maybe, she actually thinks she is telling the truth. Maybe she does not remember that she slapped me or convinced herself otherwise, or maybe I exaggerated a story I was told and it suddenly transformed into a memory I have of that situation.

I like to think that 9/11 was a day I remember perfectly. I was young and only in 1st grade, but I remember it as if I were right in my classroom again. I can picture exactly where I was standing, right beside my teacher. She had turned on the radio in that dingy, old classroom, after she had gotten a call about her sister, who they could not reach. The radio hosts stopped talking and paused, then announced “folks, I think there is an act of terrorism taking place right now. This is certainly tragic.” As if it were a movie, I cut to the next scene, my mom running in to the school as I stand by the door waiting for her. She takes our neighbors, Tommy and Alex, home from school too, and I could not understand why she was so upset. I said “Mommy, did you hear a plane crashed into that building Dad goes to sometimes… and where Tommy’s dad works? And Uncle Billy too…”

My mom shushed me as tears streamed down her face. Next thing I remember, my eight month pregnant mother sobbing on the floor as we watched the news and the first tower fell. I remember those moments so vividly that I feel like I am watching a movie about it. Luckily, my dad was at a different office today, Tommy’s dads glasses broke so he had to stop at the eye doctor before work, and Uncle Billy decided to go down for breakfast in the basement of tower right before his entire floor was obliterated by a jet.

Are all my memories false? No, probably not. But the fact that I may not actually know which are real and which are not so real frighten me to the bone. I cannot fathom the idea of things that are beyond my “reality” or the “truth” that I thought I had understood being different from exactly how I believed they were. What did I miss? Talk about some serious FOMO… I don’t even know if what I remember is really all that was happening. When Dr. Wede was talking about how from what he understands about memory, most of what he thinks is fact is probably only partially actual events, it made me feel as if I was not necessarily in control of my brain- like it is acting on its own, separate from the body we both inhabit. The power of the brain is so beyond my imagination that it can actually change my entire perception of the world based on my memory cues.