Still More Evidence that My Entire Childhood was an Elaborate Implanted Memory

"...a little of the Ludwig Van."

Science fiction and fantasy works have long served as a way of exploring and discussing the human psyche through an accessible and understandable framework. One needs only consider the visceral, emotional responses to Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast to see just how easily these stories can really dig deep down into our minds and nest there. Today, through popular culture and especially film, these stories have a broader exposure than ever before. We’re finally starting to see the impacts of some of these discussions on both psychological research and psychiatric diagnoses.

Disclaimer: I have no psychiatric training of any sort (as evidenced by the fact that I had to look up how to spell “psychiatric”), so please take every conclusion I make in this essay as pure BS.

The Matrix has revitalized the study of consciousness and brought both support and scrutiny to the “Brain in a Vat” thought experiment. Christopher Nolan’s Memento gives us an interesting (and apparently fairly accurate) look into the world of an amnesiac. And who could forget Russel Crowe’s memorable portrayal of Nobel Prize-winner John Nash’s slow descent into schizophrenia in the much-lauded A Beautiful Mind?

But sometimes the fanciful concepts introduced in fiction cross over into our world and become legitimate issues for people. The accessible nature of film and the vivid realism of contemporary filmmaking can sometimes serve to bring out or accentuate existing psychological issues. One of the first places I was really able to understand this was when I read about The Truman Show Delusion in high school. Truman was and still is one of my favorite films, and in the movie Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, the star of the world’s most popular TV show. However, what makes the show so popular is that it’s just a realistic portrayal of normal life, to the point that Truman doesn’t know that he’s spent his entire life in a fake city populated by actors with over 5,000 cameras broadcasting his spontaneous actions around the globe.

"Oh, and in case I don't see you: good afternoon, good evening, and good night!"

It’s a really fascinating concept, and sometimes when I’m bored I’ll even look around the room where I am and try to figure out what the best camera angles would be and where they’d stuff the craft services table if my life were a TV show. However, to people suffering from The Truman Show Delusion, things go quite a bit further into borderline schizophrenia. One documented case tells of a patient who “traveled to New York City after 9/11 to make sure that the 2001 terrorist attacks were not a plot twist”. A common theme in the reported cases is that the Trumans generally perceive “that the ordinary world has changed in some significant but inexplicable way”, including how others interact with them, and they conclude from these perceptions that they are living in a “fabricated world”.

It’s the theme of fabricated reality that I want to talk about today, and it ties in to one of the most iconic science fiction films of all time: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. In the film, Harrison Ford’s character is tasked with hunting down rogue androids. In both the book and the film, the “replicants” are given artificial memories to make them more relatable to humanity, which in some ways parallels the artificial reality present in The Matrix. Like The Matrix, Blade Runner’s implanted memories are so convincing that the cast includes at least one (WARNING THIS LINK IS A SPOILER) replicant who thinks they’re human.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..."

Implanted memories are an alternative explanation to explain “inexplicable” changes in the world like those described by Trumans, and are seized upon by ufologists and conspiracy theorists to explain something that’s just not quite right about their recollection of the past. Although I’m not a member of any of those fringe groups, I’m all out of plausible theories to explain one of the more improbable coincidences of my entire childhood. As Sherlock Holmes said, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

What I Remember

In elementary school in my county, there was always a unit where we were supposed to write a story. In upper grades, we were expected to write the whole thing ourselves, but in the lower grades we’d describe the story to a volunteer parent, they’d type it up for us, and we’d just do the illustrations.

My kindergarten story was about a group of flying snowmen traveling the world. It was fantastic, and there were only about 25 words. Take that, Tolstoy.

My second grade story was about a pair of skis who moved on their own when somebody left the door open. Since we always wrote the things during winter when there were limited opportunities for recess, you can tell how enamored I was with a ski trip or something.

My third grade story involved a kid who hiked up Mt Everest. It was the first one I wrote myself, and you can tell that “random adventure” is a theme in all my early “books”.

But the one that I’m here to tell you about today is from first grade. If you believe my memory, in February of 1993 I wrote a book called Scamper the Penguin and His Adventures. I still have the thing, and I’ll reproduce it for you in its entirety here:

All in all, it seems like another benign adventure story.

The Troubling Coincidence

During a random Wikipedia search, I recently became aware of a joint Japanese-Soviet animated film released in 1986 called The Adventures of Scamper the Penguin (trailer). Now, sure, they did release an English dub of the film in 1989, and it’s possible that I saw it in preschool and described it to the parent volunteer who didn’t recognize it as somebody else’s story and was just happy to be done with all these snotty-nosed kids in the middle of cold season… but of course I would never plagiarize something so obviously that’s not a logical explanation.

They even got my red penguin from the last page!

Clearly, the only possible explanations are: 1) the producers stole my idea and then went back (to 1986 of all places) and wrote Priklyucheniya Pingvinenka Lolo or 2) my entire childhood was a lie. For the sake of sensationalism, I choose #2.

In the next post, Peter promises he won’t engage in wild, fictional speculation and will instead cross-post something he’s been working on for PeopleMovers. Also, the article will be shorter.