"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin." - Barbara Kingsolver

As the years passed, that slanted version of history (the "annals of the king") would be formally committed to memory by the king’s "preachers," who were then dispatched throughout the kingdom to spread the good word about the king. Thus the written annals became the basis of an oral literature, with all the variations and additional embellishments common to oral literatures.

In more modern times it has become a tradition for political leaders around the world to write autobiographies, or to authorize others to write their biographies. The purpose being to establish (embellish?) their legacies by controlling what was written about them. Winston Churchill was not willing to leave anything to chance in this regard. He said that "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." He was keenly aware that there will always be conflicting views of history, and that they are often driven by agenda.

To a lesser degree every family does a similar thing. While leaders of a family do not typically hire scribes or biographers to write about their laudable exploits, they do employ a form of oral literature to accomplish it.

For instance, at family picnics and reunions, the same old stories are repeated time after time. One such tale might go like this: "We all remember Great Uncle Rex — Doctor Rex. He was our family’s ancestor who worked with Dr. Jonas Salk in developing the polio vaccine. In fact, it was actually Dr. Rex who did most of the research, and without him the vaccine would never have been successful."

Another story might center upon someone like Great, Great Grandpa Jones. "Yeah, you’ve heard about Grandpa Jones, haven’t you? It was his hardware store that served as the cornerstone around which this whole town grew. Yeah, without Great, Great Grandpa Jones there might never have been a town called Springfield."

Of course, there was no "Dr. Rex" associated with Dr. Salk; nor did the family’s hardware store necessarily ever amount to much. I simply made these two stories up to demonstrate my point—every family has an oral literature. And, the reliability of these oral literatures is sometimes (if not usually) suspect.

But this practice is even more pervasive than the examples cited above. Even small family units consisting of a mother and father, and their grown children, tell stories about their lives. If the experience was a happy one, the stories will be slanted in that direction. If unhappy, mostly the negative will be rehashed, and of course amplified.

In every case, there will be key words that serve as the triggering devices for these significant memories of events. As mentioned earlier, Evie and I refer to them as vignettes. Scientifically, they are call mnemonics, which is basically an omnibus term used to denote anything having to do with the study of memory.

Educators apply the term a little more specifically. When they speak of mnemonics, they are usually referring to such things as rhymes and acrostics—the devices they use in order to help students memorize lists. It is in a similar fashion, I believe, that families employ memory triggering devices (mnemonics) in the development of its collective memory, or its oral literature.

After getting a grasp on some of the more practical aspects of mnemonics, Evie and I decided to take a closer look at the science behind it; more specifically, into that area of mnemonics that explains the manner in which the human brain stores and retrieves memories. As a result, we started to understand what was happening to us as we were writing this book.

It is this concept of mnemonics, and the inherent manner in which the human brain stores and retrieves memories, that led Evie and me to a fourth possible cause for the discrepancies we experienced when retrieving and expressing our memories.

We discovered that while we may have shared a common mnemonic; the information triggered by that mnemonic had through the years developed differently in our individual memory bank.

Here’s how that works: Just like all normal human beings, Evie and I each have brains containing over 100 billion neurons (although she might argue less for me). That’s where memories are stored. But it doesn’t stop there. Each individual neuron may be interconnected to hundreds of other memory-containing cells by transmission devices called synapses, of which there are trillions.

The way this network develops is different in every case, as it is highly influenced by emotional stimuli—both at the time of the event, and every time it is recalled thereafter. While Evie and I may have shared a common memory trigger (mnemonic), through the years the synapses network associated with it had developed differently in each of us. That means, when I would bring up a memory triggered by a particular mnemonic, such as "walks in the East Village," while it would spark a similarly excited flurry of brain activity in each of us, the synapses network she had developed around the stimulated neuron was sometimes vastly different from mine.

Therefore, to Evie the "walks in the East Village" mnemonic might conjure up the sights, sounds and smells of little shops and galleries; my synapses network triggered neurons which stored elements of relative safety and danger. After all, her primary role in life has always been shopping; while mine was watching out for her while she shopped.

The irony of this phenomenon is that before we started writing this book, whenever Evie and I would mention one of our common memory triggers, we would both assume that the memory it retrieved in each of us would be virtually the same. Obviously that was a wrong assumption, as is made clear by the chapters that follow.

Perhaps there are additional causes for the disparities. But my hunch is that those listed above are the major ones; with the likelihood that divergent synopsis development played an overriding role.

I would really like to see this phenomenon become the subject of a scholarly paper—perhaps even a doctoral thesis, if such is not already the case.

Also, I would encourage other married couples who have lived together longer than a couple decades to engage themselves in a similar project. I have no doubt that they would find fascinating the disparities (perhaps even contradistinctions) in their own recollections. I am sure it would do amazing things for their relationship, plus provide gossip fodder for their family tree going forward. What a hoot!

Even beyond married couples, the practice of "comparative mnemonics" (the term we coined to describe the phenomenon) could be easily adapted for groups such as college roommates, adult siblings, members of fraternities and sororities, etc. Even adult children and their elderly parents might wish to participate. All of these groups could employ a similar system for recording their diverging accounts of significant memories. To aid in this effort, Evie and I are completing a new book (TRAX the Manual), which lays out all the pathways and pitfalls that we think would be helpful to know when embarking on a similar odyssey. Watch for it in early 2011.
 

Another note that I should point out that most names have been changed in this book. Even though Evie and I wrote everything with good intentions, and tried to be as honest as possible, we realized that offense might be taken by some of those mentioned. In several instances we note that the names have been changed, in other cases we did not.

There is no doubt that mistakes have been made with regard to facts. For instance, were the police cars in New York (in 1968) blue and white, or black and white? We simply could not agree on this. If you discover errors such as that, or regarding specific dates, don’t worry about them. But if you find spelling or grammatical errors, please let us know.

Finally, Evie and I were both a little surprised to discover just how significant a role wine played in our lives during those early years. I think if we were able to go back and change one thing, that would be it. We did discuss whether or not we should attempt to minimize the fact that we did drink too much when we first got married, and decided that it would be best to stick to the truth, as we remembered it. Today, neither of us drinks alcohol. At some point it ceased to have the attraction it once did.

"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin."

—Barbara Kingsolver