Life is strange, tragic and wonderful all at the same time. The longer you live, the more you collect extraordinary experiences. Now that I am retired, I have more time to reflect and remember my events and cull the most enlightening, exciting and terrifying ones to share. I did say “remember,” but that is tenuous at best.
A recent NPR show about memory showed just how flawed our brains can be when it comes to recalling the past. This is why my website is called Fallible Flashbacks. Many of my experiences seem very vivid. They were times where I was shocked or scared or thrilled or doubted myself. I thought that I would never forget these occasions, but science says otherwise. In actuality, we only remember parts and we fill in the rest with our best guesses and some wishful thinking. We favor making ourselves look better.
So, for better or for worse, my blog contains snippets from my 60+ years of living. My desire is that these stories will uplift, entertain, or inspire. They are my unique perspective. Even if my siblings remember things in a different way, it doesn’t mean that one person is right and another is wrong. It means that we each experienced things from our own point of view.
I was born to uneducated parents from Kentucky. They met and married after one month while living in Dayton, Ohio after the Korean War. My childhood was spent partially in Dayton and partially in Tucson, Arizona. I was the black sheep of my family and escaped to get married at age twenty (more about my siblings’ imprisonment later). My life led me to six different states, two marriages (and divorces), three children, two college degrees and dozens of jobs.
COVID-19 led to my premature retirement. My plan now is to finally relax and enjoy life while I still can. I want to volunteer in my community, travel, spend time with loved ones and write. The time for excuses and procrastination is over. I will sit at my desk and type my fallible flashbacks. Please accept these flawed memories as my faulty brain tries to remember how to write about them.