Something unsettling happened to me this morning. Recently, when choosing my next book to read, I selected a non-fiction historical account I had read once before, some 6-8 years ago. A second reading seemed due.
I finished it this morning, and that’s when the weirdness began. After turning the last pages, I realized that I had been subconsciously anticipating a part of the story that flat wasn’t there.
I seemed to recall the story extending to the last years of a certain man’s life, concerning his relationship to his third and last wife. While that wife was mentioned briefly in passing and a picture of the couple included with other photos, there was absolutely no exploration of their years together. The author concluded the account as the two were just getting together.
Confused, I flipped through the pages again. Did I skip a chapter? Was there a foreword that I thumbed past? I scanned through the author’s thank-you page again, just in case it was tucked in there. Nothing.
Now where did I come up with that part of the narrative I seemed to remember? Perhaps I read a different account about the same person? Possible, but unlikely. Was it a different story altogether I read and conflated with this one? More likely, perhaps, but I’ve been scratching my head all morning trying to think of how and what that could be. I’m stumped.
Either my brain caught and stored something, serving it up nicely as added garnish to someone else’s tale, or I just cut it from whole cloth. And either way, it’s a little scary.
The mind is an awesome thing, in every sense of the word. We must be really careful about what we know that we know.