A Clarification

It was brought to my attention that some of the statements I made in my last post could be misunderstood, so I wanted to clarify.

My parents NEVER mocked Santa Claus or other people who believed in him.  They did (and still do) have decorations that involve Santa Claus, so in that way my family is not anti-Santa Claus.  In fact, most of the anti-Santa Claus sentiment in my family comes not from my parents, but from my siblings.  My parents didn't perpetuate the Santa mythology, but they didn't bash on it, either.  We kids did that on our own.

And really, I can only speak for myself.  I try to write honestly, and I hope that I represent things as accurately as I can, but I still know that my individual perspective is bound to be different than other people's perspectives about the same topics/events/memories.  In this case, I think that most of my statements were true, but were out of context, and therefore misleading.

But this brings up all kinds of interesting questions, and the most fascinating of all, in my opinion, is about memory.

I have gotten myself in trouble before by verbally going over an event with someone.  When another person wasn't involved in said event, that other doesn't really care how I represent it, and they might even take what I say as How It Happened.  But when that other person WAS there, I've found that very rarely do we agree about how things went down.  Occasionally I find that the differences are SO VAST, that I can no longer say with conviction that I know what happened in the first place.

So where is that line?  Where's the line between fact and fiction?  The line between truth and perception?  And how is it that memory blends the two and creates something different than truth and yet incredibly powerful?  ...  It's all fascinating to me, and as I get older it makes me more grateful for others who were there in the first place.  Makes me feel more sane when we agree, and more Human when we disagree.