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December 17, 2017, the Good Men Project kindly published my article entitled, This Mandela Effect Is Getting To Me. I was hoping to have a better understanding of what the Mandela Effect is by now. I don’t. I was hoping that it would be bothering me less. It isn’t.
If you don’t know what I am referring to as the Mandela Effect, you can take a few minutes and read my article, do an internet search, then come back here.
If you know what is going on with the Mandela Effect, please let me know.
Traditionally most men have been strongly encouraged to live in the “real world.” This is usually defined as the realm of well-known cause and effect relationships, in the material world. Knowledge of this world is helpful in being able to fix things when they get broken.
I, for instance, in the last month had to address a clogged toilet, a mysterious water leak under the kitchen sink and a car that wouldn’t start. The toilet turned out to be beyond my skill set. It got fixed with the expertise of three plumbers. The main problem was roots in a sewer pipe. The car needs a new battery. The sink situation required my tightening a faucet by hand. When the faucet didn’t stop leaking by turning it in one direction I knew enough to resort to turning it in the other.
All of these fixes may have been had more quickly if I wasn’t distracted by trying to figure out what the Mandela Effect is all about. If it wasn’t for my wife’s oversight, I would most likely still be fretting over when the plumber was going to get here.
I do not know how understanding the Mandela Effect better would have aided me in getting the toilet unstopped, the faucet stopped and the car started, more efficiently. I have not a clue if better understanding the Mandela Effect might help me with some future problem that needs fixing. Just the same, I have trouble believing that I can just let this mind-bending shift in my reality go without further contemplation.
One way of trying to give up understanding the Mandela Effect is to just believe that my memory isn’t perfect. Such as when I read that the witch in the Disney film, “Sleeping Beauty” line was ”magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all,” and not being “mirror, mirror on the wall . . . .”
Darth Vader, in the first Star Wars film, never said “Luke, I am Your Father,” Mr. Rogers, “. . . it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, Forrest Gump, “Life is like a box of chocolates.” Are these just three examples of thousands of things that I misremember the same way millions, if not billions, of other people, do? Not “Luke” but “No,” not “the,” but “this,” not “is,” but “” was?” I don’t think so.
If I went this way I would be going with the way of “wishful thinking.”The way of convincing myself that nothing remarkable, is like I thought it was.
No something has been altering my reality.
Some people argue that the Mandela Effect isn’t interesting because only trivial things have been affected. How could anybody argue that? If so how about having where your heart is located change?
I was born with a concave sternum. My heart was to the left of my sternum. I could easily feel my heartbeat. When I read that one of the Mandela Effects was people believing that the standard-issue human heart was now in the middle of the chest, I knew that my heart wasn’t. Just to be sure, I put two fingers on the spot where I could always easily feel my heartbeat. I felt nothing.
Months later, at my annual physical examination, I asked my doctor about it. He said, “nowadays we think of the heart as being in the center of the chest.”I decided not to pursue the matter with him. I had thought that I used to place my right hand on my chest, left of center, to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States Of America, because that was where my heart was. I guess not.
I wonder if someone has come up with a Mandela Effect board game like Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit yet? I would think this would be a big hit.
When I read online that many people remember Thanksgiving Day in the United States is celebrated on the third Thursday of the month, change without notice to the fourth Thursday, I Googled the Thanksgiving Day that was before my wife’s birthday, which was the day before we got married. I remembered picking our wedding day for the Saturday of Thanksgiving week that year, 1974. We thought that it would be nice to have four days off in a row. I had just started a new job and couldn’t take vacation other than Thanksgiving Day and the Friday afterward.
I don’t know how many times I have remembered my wedding date by remembering it to be the day before my wife’s birthday and remembering what a busy week the Thanksgiving Day week we got married was. Google proved me wrong.
To date, I have found no evidence of anything happening on Thanksgiving Day, November 21, 1974. According to Google, the Dallas Cowboys beat the Washington Redskins on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1974, the fourth Thursday of the month. The Macy’s Day parade in New York City, which is always held on Thanksgiving Day, was held on November 28, 1974. It was the first year that any of Jim Henson’s Muppet characters appeared in the parade, according to one internet article. Yet, I noted that in the body of the article it refers to the date being November 11, 1974. It could be that whatever force causes Mandela Effect changes malfunctioned and changed a 21 into an 11, instead of a 28. Or was this just what used to be called a typographical error.
I have since found a desktop calendar page from 1974, which my now deceased father-in-law, had used for a scrap paper note. It shows that Thanksgiving that year was November 28.
However, I remember eating Thanksgiving Day dinner with my family and thinking about how my bride – to- be was doing the same with her family. I was sure that this was the case, until I found a letter that I had written to my parents, that are now both deceased, that my Mother had saved. The letter made reference to the Thanksgiving dinner that I spent, with just me and my wife on, November 28, 1974.
I still believe in my Thanksgiving Day memories of November 21, 1974, and my marriage ceremony later that week. Whatever is doing this Mandela Effecting to me is doing so in a very personal manner.
I have read accounts of people waking up to find that their children or partners have been swapped out overnight for other people.
What in the World is going on? Why is Mandela Effect changes happening to some people and not others? Why do the changes range from the boring to the profoundly mind-blowing? As far as I know, Santa Claus is still a fictional being. I’m not so sure about the North Pole though. I look to Google Maps for answers and find only water where an ice cap used to be.
Why doesn’t CNN report daily on progress in trying to figure out what is happening to reality?
It is as if some mocking malevolent force has gotten partial control over every day “nuts and bolts” or various aspects of some people’s realities for purposes unknown.
How much longer can these Mandela Effect changes go on before they begin to affect a man’s ability to fix things? The giant home improvement store chain always is known as The Home Depot was and is now only known by me as Home Depot, no “The” about it.
Somebody help me
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