memory failure – Go Retire Psychiatrist

I watched the Svengoolie show movie, “Young Frankenstein” last night and the most striking thing I can say about it is that, while it was really funny, it set off a train of thought that led me to question whether or not there should be an individual category of the Mandela Effect. As everyone knows the definition of that phenomenon is when a large group of people collectively misremember an event or fact. I misremembered an event that happened when I was in the 6^th grade.

Incidentally, the Mandela Effect was a feature in an X-Files episode entitled “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat.” In my case, this would just be called a false memory. You could call it confabulation, which can be a brain disorder caused by thiamine deficiency—but I eat too well for that.

On the other hand, I can say that I forgot that the Iowa Hawkeye vs Penn State football game that was scheduled for yesterday afternoon was not available on cable. It was only on a streaming service and so I didn’t have to go hunting for an Internet Archive recording of “Young Frankenstein” to avoid my presumed time conflict between the Svengoolie show and the game. By the way, Iowa won 25-24.

This is not going to be a post about “Young Frankenstein” because this movie already has enough reviews and since it was directed by Mel Brooks and released in 1974 it’s still pretty fresh in the minds of many people, including baby boomers like me.

I’m really sure I’m probably the only one who misremembers an “event” about a movie which I heard some 6^th grade kid talking about, which was another Mel Brooks movie, “Blazing Saddles.” This film was also made in 1974. I was not in the 6^th grade at that time.

I’m sure you caught that. No 6^th grade buddy of mine in that era could have been talking about that movie and saying something like “I didn’t think it was going to be a farce!” Those were my friend’s exact words and he never said it—but I have this bogus memory of it being attached to “Blazing Saddles.”

I looked at a Wikipedia list of movies with western themes in the 1960s and I can’t pick one out that my friend in the 6^th grade would have thought was a farce.

I probably can’t chalk this up to getting older because I’ve had this false memory for decades.

And I made a YouTube several months ago telling a bald eagle joke that I persist in “remembering” Jim Carrey tell many years ago during a televised stand-up routine. I asked that people contact me on my blog to let me know if they knew the origin of the joke. No takers. That event never happened either, apparently. When I google it, my video pops up near the top of the list of a very short list of links and AI is not helpful. It’s probably just another false memory.