The other day I was waiting for "The Simpsons" to load on Hulu and happened upon a news story . It seems that 1 in 5 people has fond recollections of events that never happened. As in false memories. Like the kind that psychiatrists put into your brain when you lie down on their couch and ask you to tell them about your mother. Like what aliens implant into rednecks' brains after abducting them and sticking probes up their Nether Regions.
That got me to thinking. Could some of my fondest memories be implanted by aliens or unscrupulous therapists? Could it really be that when I asked Becky Rhubabrb out in eighth grade that she didn't say "Yes! Yes! Of course!" and we dated throughout grade school and college and lived happily ever after? Could it be that she really laughed until she wet herself and told me "Not if you were the last boy on earth and all the girls were busy that night"?
Or might it be possible that in high school I didn't come up with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in the playoffs and hit a home run, being mobbed by my adoring fans and ecstatic teammates, who then carried me off the field and starting chanting "Fat Kid! Fat Kid!" as I took my bow? Might it be that I really struck out chasing a ball out of the strike zone, losing the game and causing my angry teammates to chase me around the field with bats and pitchforks?
Or when I went on "American Idol" and I got a "Dawg! You da BOMB!" from Randy, an "I am quitting the music business because you are setting the standard way too high now" from Paula and a "Cancel the rest of the auditions because we have a winner" from Simon? Could that be just a false memory?
Or when I went on "Hell's Kitchen" and convinced Chef Ramsay to change the menu to hot dogs and Ding Dongs, and he called it "&!^#%$'ng brilliant!!!!" and I won in a landslide and he changed the name of the show to "Fat Kid's Kitchen"? That really happened, didn't it?
I know that those things really happened, because I have vivid recall, just like I can see clearly how I won an Nobel Peace Prize for my work with my friends Shaggy and Scooby in tracking down the culprets who were dumping toxic waste into the swamp behind the school and then tricking people into thinking it was haunted so that nobody would come around and catch them in the act, but it turns out that the ghost was just a sheet on a wire accompanied by a creepy soundtrack, and we unmasked the bad guy and exposed the whole thing.
Now I know that really happened because they gave us an award and everything.
If I could just remember where I put the thing...
