I lived with my wife & kids in England for 4-5 months in 1992. I have many clear memories of incidents that happened or scenery we passed by on the motorways or on the streets near where we lived & shopped & worked, and of the routes I took every day, hundreds of times total.
And in every one of those memories, I am driving on the right side of the road, or in the slow/right lane on divided highways pulling out into the left lane to pass someone, or sitting in the left-hand driver's seat of our carpool car looking at my wife to my right, or looking to the right at my father-in-law in the front passenger seat of the rented caravan (ie motorhome) we drove for 3 weeks just before moving home.
Yet all those left-right memories contain completely false images in my mind's-eye, because in the UK, you drive on the left, not the right. And the driver's seats were on the right, not the left.
What's also interesting is that when I run these incidents or routes through my head, and I suddenly realize I'm in a false mirror image of what I actually saw, I am able to consciously correct the mind's-eye images to see it as it really had to have happened.
And that ability to consciously correct the images that are part of a long-term deeply buried memory, makes me realize it should be easy for Ford to decide she "needs" to correct a 35+ year old memory to match what she thinks she SHOULD be remembering.
When I said “I know exactly what she’s talking about,” I’m referring to Linda Chavez’s “crystal clear” memories of the day her sister died, which she realized later contained significant anachronisms, ie false pieces of the memory, though not the entire memory.
Yep. This seems to be common.
One old memory I have always seemed crystal clear, but just today I realized that I must've confused one little detail (which had to do with left-right perspective).
Other people do this, too. Sometimes, a friend or family member will insist you did or said something that you know you never did or said. You can tell they're mixing up different conversations. Then they spread misinformation. Or they'll insist you weren't somewhere, even though you remember being there.
Like Judge K., I kept detailed calendars for many years. Whenever anyone (loved ones) would insist we went somewhere, or didn't go somewhere, or whatever, the calendar would settle the argument.