Category: Life

The Persistence of False Memory

I am very skeptical of the whole recovered/repressed memory thing. You know, when someone, usually someone with a lawyer, suddenly recalls being abused by someone else 30 or 40 years ago. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, but I don’t think it happens nearly as often as it is claimed to have happened. For one thing, I have yet to hear about someone who had a repressed memory about something good (“wow, I just remembered that I went to Disneyland when I was nine”). It’s sort of like how everyone who believes in reincarnation used to be somebody famous.

Another reason I have my doubts about recovered/repressed memory is because I have a false memory- something that seems exactly like a real memory. Only I know it didn’t happen. Ironically, it is a pleasant memory. Since it’s Christmas-related, here goes.

videogame-710323I have this memory of getting an arcade-like, multi-game video game for Christmas. It was maybe 6 feet tall, light blue on the sides, with a some black parts where the knobs and coin slots were. It had a single joystick with a red ball at the end of it and a few black buttons. This is a drawing of it. I got it for Christmas, and my memory of getting that game is as sharp now as it would have been the week after I got it- except I didn’t.

For one thing, I have no memories of ever actually playing the game, or even what games were on it. I have no later recollection of it in my room or house. I don’t remember getting rid of it. My only memory (and it’s a vivid one) is of getting it Christmas morning, and later that day having it moved (by people or forces unknown) upstairs to my room.

Additionally, this would have been around 1970 or so and I’m pretty sure these sorts of games didn’t exist then, and if they did, they would have cost a lot more than my mom would have spent.

I can’t recall exactly when this memory made its way into my consciousness, but it’s been there at least 10 years.

Very strange indeed.

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3 Things I Remember About: 1971

This is the 7th part is a series.

Antique Acres 1971 A-717401

(1) Our neighbors across the street had this huge antique steam engine festival where people from all over came to display steam engines and other old machinery. The festival lasted all weekend and was about the biggest thing that had ever happened in my hometown. We snuck in by wading through the creek and spent all weekend running around, watching the steam engines and whatnot. It sounds mildly boring now, but at the time it was really fun. A year or so ago I saw this newsletter for sale on eBay.

(2) I moved from Robert Smalls Elementary to Cheraw Elementary (I believe that was its name) for the 6th grade. It must have been an uneventful year, because about all I remember from that year is playing marbles at recess. I can’t even remember who my teachers were.

(3) I won some sort of DAR essay contest. We had to write an essay about the revolutionary war. I wrote about the Green Mountain Boys (I have no idea why). I got this little medal that hung in a frame on the wall at my mom’s house along with my Eagle Scout medal and some other approbations until my mom died.

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From My Netflix Queue

I watched two horror films this weekend, here’s the report:

theyfilmThey: Nothing special film about night terrors that chase some kids into adulthood- until the alternate ending (a special feature), which was pretty cool. 2.5 stars (out of 5). If you really like horror movies and you’ve run through your queue, this one might be work a look.

Night Creatures: Anything by Hammer Studios is going to be at least pretty good. This one stars Peter Cushing. A little slow moving, with a very interesting ending. 3 stars.

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20 Second Movie Review

eternalsunshine

I don’t see many movies in the theatre. Other then the kids movies that we see as a family, I normally don’t see a movie until it comes out on DVD. Sometimes I don’t get around to watching a movie until long after it is released.

That’s why I just watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night.

This is a perfect movie. Excellent performances all around. I like every single thing about it. Clever, interesting and thought provoking, but not pretentious. I watched this movie carefully and really got a lot from it. I am sure, however, that there is more that I missed. Unlike 99.99% of the movies I have watched, I’ll watch this one again.

Definitely one of my top 10 all-time. Definitely.

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Happy Birthday Raina!

Today is Raina’s birthday. Cassidy and I got up early and went to the store. We bought a big balloon, a cake, some flowers and some cards. She and Delaney wrote notes and signed their cards and we called Raina downstairs for her surprise.

We hope she has a great birthday!

Soccer with the Kids

We set up a soccer field in the new yard and Cassidy, Delaney and I have come up with a way to play one on two (old slow daddy against young and tireless Cassidy and Delaney). Here’s how it works. Cassidy and Delaney can run anywhere on the field, but I have to stay within around 12 feet from my own goal (we use one of the trees as the marker). This means that all of my shots are long distance shots, which makes it hard to score. In fact, I am 0-5, having lost 3-2, 5-2, 2-1 and, in a couple of one-sided marathons, 20-8 and 20-9. During the last couple of games, Cassidy actually concluded that I couldn’t score on an open goal and that there was no real need on her part to play hard on defense.

It’s amazing how much the kids get into it when they think it’s playing instead of practicing. Cassidy has already figured out four things on her own that she never learned at soccer practice:

1) If I get the ball, either by stealing it or after she scores a goal, she runs back to her goal and guards it (more casually now than at first since she thinks correctly that I can’t kick the ball straight). Since I am kicking from the other end of the field, I cannot (and probably never will) score a goal if she gets back into position. My only chance is to kick it around and past her while she’s running back. This is hard to do, which is why I have lost 5 straight games.

2) If she’s dribbling towards my goal and I challenge her, she turns around and kicks the ball back out to mid-field, beyond the tree- where I cannot go, and starts over.

3) If she gets close to my goal and kicks it hard, most of the time the worst thing that will happen is the ball bounces off my leg and she gets another shot. If she kicks it hard and repeatedly, she often scores, since I can only block so many shots in a row.

4) She and Delaney have learned to work together. One of them gets on one side of my goal and one on the other. When they do this correctly, it is almost impossible for me to stop them from scoring.

If we’d had this yard when she was 3 years old, Cassidy would be a good and interested soccer player. I don’t know if it’s too late to get her interested in it, but I’m going to try. Delaney may actually become a good player by the start of next season.

This is the first sports game we have come up with where I can try as hard as I want and it’s still competitive and fun. It is a whole lot of fun, especially for them. It’s easy to have fun when you’re clobbering your daddy.

Renaissance Festival

The Newsomes, Clarks and Veldmans went to the Texas Renaissance Festival today. This was the 6th straight year we have been and, as always, it was great. The kids had a blast.

We rode elephants, camels and llamas. The kids rode the merry-go-round, the spinning cups and the big swing. Cassidy did the bungee cord/trampoline thing and loved it- she was higher than the top of our house!

We dug in the rock mine and found some really cool rocks.

We ate some good food, saw some jousting and watched a funny mud pit show. Mostly we just walked around and had a great time.

On the way back we stopped at a Greek restaurant and had dinner. My sister won’t believe it, but I actually liked the food. Mercifully, there was not a grape leaf in sight.

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3 Things I Remember About: 1970

Astrodome 1970-777359

(1) I went with my grandfather to Houston to see a baseball series between the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros. It was my first time on an airplane and my first trip to Houston. Little did I know that I would end up living here. After the game, we got a bunch of autographs from the Houston players.

(2) I started the fifth grade. That was the first year my school was integrated. It seems surreal to me now that before that white kids and black kids went to different schools. We had no problems at all at my school. In fact, my teacher that year, Mrs. McIver, who previously taught at the black elementary school, became and remains one of my favorite teachers ever.

(3) I remember seeing reports about the Kent State shootings on TV. I was too young to be as outraged as I should have been. Neil Young wrote a phenomenal protest song about that horrible event.

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Friend Fishing: Pud Man

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Now that Project Flickr has proved to be a complete failure, I need a new experiment. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go internet fishing for some old friends of mine.

When I started this blog I figured by posting here, sending some emails, sharing photos, etc, I’d create a happy little cyber-community and all of my current and past friends would join me in an in internet reunion and love-fest. Well, that didn’t happen. While Newsome.Org has a bunch of readers, my record as a poor correspondent who has lost touch with a lot of his old friends remains mostly intact.

Everyone who uses the internet does a Google search on himself or herself from time to time, so I’m going to cast some lines in the great Google lake and see if I can catch an old buddy or two. My bait will consist of occasional Friend Fishing posts about people I haven’t heard from in a while. Maybe some of these folks will find a link to a post about them and find their way here. I’m sure they won’t sign up for Flickr (I’m not bitter, really. I just sound that way), but maybe they’ll send an email or leave a comment and tell me what they’ve been up to.

I’m going to start with the infamous Pud Man. My old friend Kevin Morris is, like me, originally from Cheraw, SC (now a Google search for Kevin Morris and Cheraw will pick up this post).

Pud Man, as we called him for reasons I can’t recall, drove a yellow car we naturally called the Pud Mobile, until he wrecked it on Highway 9 one day. He was a good basketball player and a very smart dude. He had a very strict mom and didn’t start partying until around our senior year of high school. He made up for lost time though- I remember one night he and I got all liquored up at Pizza Inn after we got off work. He spent the night with me the night of our Senior Prom and we drove around drinking before and after the dance with our highly irritated dates. I’m pretty sure that neither of those too-nice-for-us girls ever spoke to us again.

I last spoke to Kevin in 1998. He was living in Charlotte, NC and working for a bank. He has a daughter close to Cassidy’s age.

Pud Man is the Kevin whose yard was the target in my factually accurate song, The Kansas Reflector Incident.

He is the guy making the “err” face at the far left in the photo. It’s not really possible to explain “err” after all this time, but that very important word was the inspiration for the name of my publishing company, Err Bear Music.

I’m going to toss this post in the water and see if I get a bite.

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