False Memory One: The Phantom Video Cassette Recorder
We never had a VCR as a child. We were poor; no phone, no car, and sometimes no money for electricity. Sometimes even no food. I was an only child, but I certainly wasn’t spoiled. On Mondays, as my mum queued at the post office, I would go to Blockbuster Video and wistfully stare at all the videos I couldn’t have. I still remember the smell of the place; a new carpet scent, that never faded. I’d pick up the tape boxes and read the blurbs, and I’d beg my mother to open a bank account so she could obtain a credit card to rent films. But she never did. I had three videotapes at home and I’d take them to my grandparents’ to watch.
Once, my cousin came to stay and my mum panicked about not being able to entertain him - he was a fussy, snobby little shit. My grandparents suggested we borrow their VCR and they took us to Blockbuster where we picked two films each.
A few years later, at Christmas, 1996, I was so excited when my grandparents bought my mum a VCR, and I received some videos as well as blank tapes to record off the TV. I could finally be like the other kids and watch Disney films in my house. Such a simple thing to crave! It seems trivial, but being poor, you’re left out of so many things. My grandad took me to Blockbuster to rent some films and I remember buying a big tin of the creamy-flavoured Chupa Chups lollies and a Simpsons keyring with my Christmas money.
Years later, talking about Christmas, I reminisced about being more excited about the VCR than my actual toys. I was surprised when my mum began screeching at me. “We always had a video machine!” she raged.
“No, we didn’t,” I insisted. Under the TV, (a big, brown boxy 80s one that had belonged to my great grandma) she kept magazines, newspapers and phone directories. Never a VCR and we didn’t even have a DVD player until 2006!
More rage; mother insisted we always watched tapes at home. I asked why, if we always had a VCR, did I always have to take them to my grandparents’ to watch? If we had one, I’d have used it, surely. Why would I have been so excited for her to receive one? Why would I attach so much excitement to a visit to Blockbuster, even remembering some fucking lollies and a keyring I bought, if it wasn’t significant? We went back and forth for a while, but my mum was so very angry and I don’t understand it. I had to leave it there. Fine, I am wrong, we always had a VCR and I imagined packing Rainbow Brite and Aladdin in my backpack and walking to my grandparents’. My grandad never brought his VCR round the day my cousin came over. I never screamed with excitement to open Casper and Jumanji on Christmas Day at the same time as my mum pulled the wrapping paper from a machine.
False Memory Two: Tomb Raider II
As I said, I grew up poor. For Christmas 1998, my grandparents bought me a TV and a PlayStation and my nan called me a spoiled brat (I was 12 and this is when her behaviour changed towards me, another story for another day). Alongside three games, it had some demo disks, which included parts of Tomb Raiders I and II. The demos would always stop after five minutes and kick you back out to the menu. The first would end as you exited a swimming pool and ran up some stairs. The second ended as you reached the top of what was supposed to be the Great Wall of China. I asked my mum for the games, but she said no, for poverty reasons.
One day in mid-1999, I came home from school, and my mum made me follow her to my room. My PlayStation was already on. The Tomb Raider II China level was on screen and my mum began playing it. As she reached the part of the level where the game cuts off, it continued - there was a door at the top of the wall, and a passageway. She walked through it. “How?!” I asked. It dawned on me that this was not the demo - this was the real thing. I saw the box on the side. “YOU BOUGHT IT!” I screamed. It had been reduced to half price. I was elated and asked to play myself, begging her to hand over the control - she was excited as I was.
Again, about five years ago, I bought a PS4. When reminiscing about my 90s games, and the time she had surprised me with Tomb Raider II, she took my happy memory and shat all over it.
“I never played games all day while you were at school!” she snarled.
“I didn’t say that. But you already had my TV on when I walked in. The game was on.”
“Nope.”
“Yes, this was the big surprise.”
“Nope. Never happened. I didn’t sit there gaming all day.”
“When did I say that? Let me finish. I was very excited.”
“Fucking liar!”
“This is a good memory, don’t start this false memory bullshit again.”
Things escalated fast, with my mother screaming that I’m questioning her mental health (er, yeah!), being patronising, and lying about her lifestyle. She slammed the kitchen door and threw stuff around, screaming that I’m an abusive bully. I remained in my room for the rest of the day. The following morning, it was apparent that she was ghosting me, looking right through me. I asked what this was about and she replied that she doesn’t owe me an explanation for her anger, then (this took place in the kitchen) she kicked the washing-up bowl into my legs. (She keeps it on the floor!) I screamed as it smashed into my ankle - it was full and a knife sticking out of it grazed me. She said it was in retaliation to me doing it to her, which if I had, was accidental and I had no recollection of doing so. Then she blew cigarette smoke into my face before storming off. I left and we didn’t speak for weeks.
False Memory Three: Bullies and the Bus Ride
I was bullied at one school and left for a different school far away, which required two bus rides. One day, my mum met me at the town centre, and we did the second bus ride home together. As it rode past a particularly rough estate, I spotted two of the boys who’d bullied me, Damian and Michael. As the bus rounded the corner, they looked up and saw us and began pointing and laughing. We both stuck our middle fingers up at them.
Years later, my mum was doing the reminiscing this time. “Remember when we stuck our fingers up at those little bastards Damian and Michael?”
I laughed. “The best part is we were on the bus and they couldn’t catch up with us.”
My mum’s face darkened with anger. “No. They were on the bus.”
Oh no. Here we go. “No, we were on the bus. I used to get buses home from school, remember.”
Cue screaming; mother calling me a liar, “trying to make a row out of anything”, “bully”, etc.
I asked her why, logically, we’d be on foot in that part of town. We didn’t know anyone down there (apart from these boys), there were no shops, no reason for us to be on foot in that rough hole of an estate, but every reason for us to be on the bus, as that was its route.
“Fucking bullshit. I remember the bus coming round the corner with them on it!’ she insisted. “Stop denying my fucking memories!”
So yeah, in her memory, we were wandering around more than two miles from home, in a residential estate, while the bully boys went by on the bus, never alighting, despite being the ones who lived there. There is no logical reason why her memory would be the correct one. I remember their laughing faces as we turned that corner and their eyes widening as we flipped them off. But not my mum, she smashed a mug across the floor and called me a cunt.