Prompt #9

I'm right. You're wrong.

Hello everybody!

Photo by Marl Clevenger on Unsplash

I was writing to a friend a few days ago, and I ended up telling them a story from my youth, a story which I will not recount here (I can’t tell you everything!). And then, a few moments later, I wrote my friend again to say that, in fact, I wasn’t at all certain that the story I’d just recounted to them had happened in just the way I had said. Perhaps I’d remembered incorrectly? I could feel it had happened in my bones—the events as I’d written them. But did I have the whole thing right?  Did it matter?

Memory. Sheesh. So terribly unreliable at times.

I bring this up in advance of asking you to read the story “Snow” by Ann Beattie, which was first published in Vanity Fair. You can read it online here.

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And… we’re back! Such a great story, right? (Or maybe you didn’t really care for it. That’s fine, too.)

For our purposes today, let’s look at the opening of the story: “I remember…”

Here, the first-person narrator recalls a chipmunk leaping into the living room, after jumping off a pile of logs her lover has just brought in from outside. As the narrator recalls it, her lover yells at the little thing, “What do you think you’re doing in here?” The chipmunk then runs around the living room, dashes through the library, and finally stops at the front door “as though it knew the house well.” Now, that’s a pretty detailed account of what that chipmunk did. Reading her description, I fully believe there was a little chipmunk running through the house like it’d been there many times before.

But then, later in the story, there’s this: “You remember it differently.”

Speaking of her now-former lover, we learn that he remembers the chipmunk running “to hide in the dark, not simply to a door that led to its escape.”

What’s going on here? What really happened with the chipmunk? Who is right?

And they remember other things differently as well. She remembers the way visitors to their home were compelled to tell “amazing stories.” He thinks their visitors “told the same stories people always told.”

This, we see, is a doomed relationship, made clear by these two phrases:

“I remember….” “You remember it differently….”

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[The writer and artist Joe Brainard wrote an entire book full of sentences that all begin with the words “I remember.” If you want to try a powerful writing exercise sometime, do it yourself. Get a piece of paper and write 20 sentences that all begin with the words “I remember.” You won’t believe what may come out if you let your mind flow.]

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Here’s this weeks’ prompt:

Write a short story where two people remember the same thing/event differently. If you want, use the same phrases as in the story (“I remember…” “You remember it differently…”).

Post your short stories in the comments if you wish (400 words max).

See you next Monday!