THE TRUTH OF MEMORY (By Robert Chapman)

When we tell stories to people, whether you are nearing old age, there already, or simply reminiscing to friends your own age, do we really tell the story as it occurred or do we tell of what and how we remember the event?

I firmly believe that the truth is something most of us can’t comprehend fully. We see facts and we witness the truth, but our memory and our personality and raising and influences of the like manipulate how we interpret the truth after we see it.

The summer of ’94 was the summer after my third grade year, my first school year in Clinton. When that summer arrived, my parents decided for me to meet new friends and for them to get settled in the new town that I would be sent to the YMCA day camp. I didn’t know a soul there when I arrived, but when I left, I knew everyone, ranging from kindergarteners to college kids working at the camp (like good ol’ Russ Wardlaw).

Each group had a HQ where we met up around 8:30 in the morning to take role and where we would also meet to eat lunch. Ours was on the swinging bridge in the middle of the playground. With the new friends I met, we would run wild around the enormous playground, forming our own little society with unwritten, unspoken rules. These simple understandings would form how we would grow up in the Arrow world, form ideas of who we were and who we were to become.

At the YMCA, I learned that you have to play soccer and baseball at Traceway to be accepted by friends. I learned that Adidas Sambas were the shoes to wear, but if you wore Adidas Gazelles, you were a touch above the rest. I learned that you have to have speed skates, your own speed skates, to be accepted at Funtime Skateland, as well as listen to the new radio station that all the cool kids listened to, Y101.

Being so young and impressionable, we all were subjected to the same introductory elements. We were introduced to legitimate rules and new freedoms. We were encouraged to solve our own squabbles and to question whether or not our arguments held merit.

The largest memory I have of the YMCA is the giant “inside” where we would go when it rained. The room was massive. Every child could fit in there and have room to play. Sure, it got pretty loud, but we didn’t care. We would play with our friends and have all the teachers around, even those we rarely saw because they were with the younger kids all day.

There in that huge building and room I learned how to perfect a spin-move in the game that dominated the camp, four-square. I could stay in the number four square longer than anyone my age. I gained notoriety from that game. There in that massive complex, I found my first crush, and seriously thought I had a shot with her. Angie Dees was, I thought, the prettiest thing I had ever seen. I got so shy around her. Today, my mother and my wife tease me about Angie Dees, especially when we see her parents at church.

The summer ended, the teachers went back to college, we progressed on to higher grades, but the four-square court was still there, the playground was there, too. The only thing that remained of that summer camp was the memory that was imprinted in our minds.

One day while I was sitting in a freshman-lit class, my instructor, Scott Morris (wonderful individual) said something to this degree: “To return to a memory is wonderful because you can see it reflected in your daily life. However, to return to the place where the memory was constructed could destroy the memory altogether.”

I returned to that playground. The playground equipment was gone, and the field seemed smaller. I walked into that building, too. The room was no longer enormous. It hadn’t changed size at all. In fact, it was still exactly the same. I had changed. I had grown. It was no longer a room full of entertainment and fun but instead it was a ghost of the past that revealed to me that a memory is a personal item. A memory is not necessarily truth, but it is part of my own truth, part of my makeup.

Tell your stories, tell your memories, but if given the opportunity to return to your memory, take a second thought to it. Remember that it might be the same, but you’re not the same. But, sometimes, do go back and witness the progression in your own life. If we didn’t grow and nothing changed, I’d be a funny looking 22 year old boy about to go into fourth grade, trying to make it to the big time league of four-square with a killer spin move that would leave you thinking, “What just happened!?” Instead, I’ll listen to your stories about your past, whether they are true or not, but only as long as they are true to you.