For once, I'm going to try and practice brevity.
The other day I was scrolling through old episodes of different paranormal TV shows, as I often do. I can't tell you how relaxing it is for me to throw one of these shows on in the background and play some Minecraft before bed.
I somehow ended up on an episode of In Search Of..., which is fine by me. It's one of my favourite shows. I typically have the DVD set of the Leonard Nimoy episodes sitting on my desk just in case I'm in the mood to throw one on while I'm working.
This particular show was centered on The Abominable Snowman and the opening moments took me aback.
When I tell you I've watched this series several times, I do mean it. So why I can't recall watching this particular episode, I can't say, but as I took in the cold open I was warped to my parents' basement in the late '80s, staring at the TV through slitted eyes and huddling under a blanket for safety.
Pretty well three years ago I actually wrote a thread on X/Twitter about it, which you can read here. I even went through the trouble of encoding some of DVD clips to include in the story.
The thing is, even though I went through all that trouble to grab scenes from the show and write the post, I was writing about the wrong episode.
As I watched the Abominable Snowman scene on my phone the other night, all the memories came flooding back to me. There's no question, this was the first episode I had seen of In Search Of... when I was like five years old.
I always had a memory of craggy snow-capped mountains and a Bigfoot running along the slope. I guess I just assumed that In Search Off... only had one episode about giant, hairy human-like creatures. It turns out they did separate features on Bigfoot and The Abominable Snowman! I just got mixed up.
I guess this is my final thought: memory is weird.
I read once that each time you recall a memory, you're not really remembering back to the initial event. You're remembering the last time you remembered it. Kind of a mindbender, but I think it makes sense. Each recollection might result in small losses of information and over time the whole thing can get pretty skewed.
When you're a person like me who is always trudging through nostalgia and days past, it certainly isn't hard to believe that things will get muddled up now and then.
Or maybe it's just senility? Please don't be senility...
