Wakeful Reverie

Crackle from the PA system pervades the classroom. A voice, soft and low but somehow strong echoes through the murmurs of the fourth grade class. 

“Excuse me, could I please have Mr. Skyler Saunders in the principal’s office?” The woman’s voice echoes throughout the room. All eyes dart in my direction. 

“Oooooh,” my classmates moan in unison, some giggle while others remain straight-faced. “Class!” She admonishes. My teacher, Mrs. Christie nods at me with a look as if she is handing a casserole to a friend who just lost their grandparent. I kinda look at the clock. I say kinda because it’s tough to gauge the time and the sea of funny faces, the low rumble of snickering with the moment’s delight on their part. I, nevertheless, endeavor to go to the principal’s office. I pick up the hall pass from my instructor that she signs and dates. Once I leave my classroom, the hall monitor is right on me. 

“Do you have a hallpass, young man?” he asked, with a coolness and a wee bit of self-aware authority. I flashed the piece of paper and proceed. I walk down the hall and see no other kids around at all. I don’t know what truancy means but it seems as if no one attempted to circumvent the system of government school learning. At least not today.  Anyway, I make it to the office. I expect a tongue-lashing for some infringement my teacher didn’t even remind me of at the time. I’m thinking there’s something wrong with my sister or anything.

No ill excursions into the abyss of disappointment surface. Instead, pure joy bubbles up inside of me.  I see my dad holding a bag and a tray with two soft drinks.

The office assistant looks at us and smiles. “You two enjoy your lunch.”

My dad and I go to the cafeteria which looks like a morgue with no bodies or refrigerators lined against the wall. Just the image of our mascot "Toothfull the Truthful Shark" bursting out of the ocean on the wall and rows of long tables meet us. This Newark, Delaware elementary school lunch room opens up for my dad and me to eat before the rush of kids come in like showers during a nor'easter. 

“Thank you dad,” I say as I bite into an Italian style hoagie. He admonishes me to say grace first. I abide. He then smiles as I finish my prayer and he chomps on chips and sips from his soda. He looks up and sees me enjoying each morsel of the quarter submarine sandwich. He hands me a napkin and I dab the corners of my mouth and start shaking my leg like every time I’m excited.

“Stop that,” Dad scolds with equal measures of sternness and consideration. I abide. A smile curls around his mouth as he finishes his meal. I’m done too. As we prepare to exit the eating area, my dad gets down on one knee and looks me in the eye.

“Now, boy, I can’t do this all the time. But I wanted to surprise you for doing so well with your studies.” I hug him. It’s a warm embrace that I shall never forget. That is if it actually happened!

  *****

Both my sister and my father seemed to reject the events I have just described. In fact, they’re certain that none of it ever took place. Was this an example of the all too mythical idealism known as the Mandela Effect? What timelines exist amongst the three of us?
“You dreamt that,” my dad riposted when I brought up the occasion.

“Was it Pop-Pop, then?” I asked, slight concern colored my voice. 

“No, because it didn’t happen,” Dad mentioned again. “You’re on a different timeline,” my sister reminded me with a sigh.

“A what?”

“You’re traveling through reality on another vibration that only you can experience,” she commented with such conviction that I also wondered about the subjective conspiracy that enveloped the situation.

“Go back,” Dad commanded. “Just think it all over. I didn’t take off from work to eat lunch with you, son. I picked you up from school but you and I never shared a meal at that school,” he explained. “I’m telling you, it was a pleasant dream your busy brain concocted. Besides, that was almost thirty years ago. Memories tie into fantasies and become or appear to become facts as we grow older.”

“I still say it’s the Mandela Effect,” my sister maintained. “With you remembering something so strongly and us dismissing it so much, you’re caught in between the fabric of time itself….” She sounded like a sage. I just recalled something so vivid and affirming, but two of the most important people in my life have made it clear that everything I said was hot air. That I just billowed out false truths and utter nonsense. That’s what it felt like. I walked around the kitchen where my dad prepared spaghetti. We looked forward to pasta but I still stewed in my wakeful reverie. I could see it all; there remained the picture of Toothful and the row upon row of empty tables. I could still smell the onions mixed with the smell of just buffed floors. I could see my dad sitting across from me with his resplendent grin and spiffy uniform. After a moment, I journeyed back to conversing with my dad and sister about this phantom memory.

“I simply can’t shake it,” I voiced. “I mean I know this was decades ago, but I remember this all happening. All of my senses are engaged when I think about it. There’s a certainty to it.”

“That certainty, son, is dead. It never existed because it didn’t happen. I’m trying to tell you,” Dad sounded almost glum but still straightforward. “Just remember actual events that have photos and videos. Those audiovisual aids allow us to catch snippets of real life and enshrine them in our memory through electronic and digital means. Are you getting the picture?” My dad asked me as if I had just emerged from a foxhole or something and sought to know if I had PTSD. Somehow, I had the reverse of the condition. I experienced no trauma or stress from a disorder. Rather, I seemed to misremember whole events and counted them all as fact.

My dad transferred the pasta to plates and we ate. After tiramisu, we sat in the living room and discussed this matter further. 

“What you’re going through, brother, is a timeline that is different from ours. I don’t know which one it is but it seems like your own personal line.” She proclaimed this as if pontificating a new remedy for suppressing a stubborn cough.

“I know you wish to believe what you said is true, but we must acknowledge the fact there’s no evidence of such an encounter,” my dad spoke as if he were a flight instructor preparing a group of pilots to go out on a mission.

I wanted to show receipts…literal receipts stuffed in the bag. I wished to convey a sense of displaying that we literally broke bread together and shared a father-son moment that felt precious and real and true. Now, they’re telling me that I made all of this up and I didn’t care. But I did care. I looked for ways to jog my dad’s memory. I wanted to get to the crux of this very subject.

“Dad, didn’t you work near the subshop, Lucy’s?”

“Yeah, so?”

“I know you went there on your lunch break. There must’ve been one time where you picked up lunch for me to eat at school. At least one time.” I didn’t plead. I just asked with a sense of sincerity enveloping my rhetoric.

“Sure, I stopped by there many times but never to give you lunch on my break or time off from work for that matter. We shared those meals together with your sister. And I remind you, it wasn’t Mom-Mom or Pop-Pop who provided the meal, either.”

My sister shifted in her seat. “Look it up. Mandela Effect all the way. I know scores of people don’t remember something, but this is your own personal effect. It’s a confabulation of the events that your brain paints when it wants to retrieve data.”

“I just know for a fact somebody took me lunch to eat. I still remember the look on the kids’ faces as I walked out of the room. It was a mix of awe and slight disdain. My teacher even looked at me as if I had broken some unnamed vow or committed some major offense. But it all turned out to be a beautiful misunderstanding. Dad, you stood there grinning with sandwiches and chips and drinks. I remember….”

“You do not.”

“The only way to solve this,” my sister chimed, “is for you to go to your yearbook.”

I still had it, actually. I found it amongst items designated for storage. The condition seemed superb. I sped through its pages. Horror coursed through my person. The mascot wasn’t even a shark…it was a chipmunk. 

How did I not remember that? I pondered. My teacher was a male and not Mrs. Christie. It’s actually Mr. Wohl. Had I been fabricating my entire existence? Had I been making up story after story jam-packed with details that did not correspond to reality?

I look my dad and sister in the eye. They had a look on their faces as if to say, “told ya so.” Now, I needed to lay down somewhere. But I pressed forward.

“Okay, I’ll admit it. I might have built up a daymare that is almost thirty years in the making. Understood. But what else am I supposed to do? There’s only one timeline available to us. That is the essence and the very nature of truth. We cannot hide from it.”

“What are you saying, Son?”

“I’m saying that there is a single truth. What the mind does is something that is inward. There’s a whole world out there beyond the sense of timelines. It’s called objectivity.” My dad and sister simply sigh.

“You’re straying away from what I explained,” my sister commented.

“I’m doing it for good reason. It might be fun to play with the limits of our imagination but we must recognize the universe is independent from all our wishes, hopes, fears, and machinations. We live in a place where no timelines exist save for one. We’re all traveling on it. Some of us have retired from this and left only our chemical remains. Other than that, I just misremembered something totally. I thought it was real, but it wasn’t. I thank you both for allowing me to arrive at this conclusion.”

My dad and sister just applauded. They stood up out of their chairs and clapped.

“That’s my boy,” my dad says with enthusiasm.

“It may not be what I’m into, but you’ve discovered something on your own and that is a remarkable achievement, Bro,’” she acknowledged. 

So, there we stood, basking in the glow of some understanding. The three of us with one central goal: push for remembrance. 

I stood and addressed them. “Encourage and stoke the coals of memory. It is far too important to have the right memories. These sustain us in a way that no other entity can. Our memories are our minds. If we begin to build up false narratives in our heads, we could be close to utter ruin. With disorders like Alzheimer’s and dementia, there’s no telling where these roads will lead us. But as we’re here right now, we can battle such maladies. My situation was just out of misremembering, as simple as that.”

They looked at me as if I had just brought down tablets from some fantastical encounter with the unknown and unknowable. 

My stepmom came into the house with the mail. 

“Hey!” she shouted.

In her hand she had what would have been junk mail. I looked at the top flyer in the postage she held.

“There’s spaghetti on the stove for,” I told her. I held a coupon for Lucy’s and looked at my dad s and sister.“I know we’re stuffed, but tomorrow, who could go for some subs, chips and soft drinks?” 

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