I’ve learned from decades of experience never to challenge my wife’s memory. So from a male perspective, this degree of specificity regarding words spoken nearly 50 years ago seems most suspect. But then again, what I forget and what my wife can remember would probably fill a book.
Stanley admittedly is an unusual name for a mother, but even conceding that point, how could someone remember this kind of minutiae for 5 decades? It would be a very different matter had there been good reason to reinforce the memory, such as reading about “mama Stanley” and her mixed-race son in the local paper 2-3 years later. But that’s not at all what happened. Like most moms, Stanley didn’t appear in local papers, she wasn’t a local celebrity, she soon moved to Indonesia etc.
So my challenge is to women (above a certain age): can ANY of you remember ANY conversation from 1961 with this degree of specificity? Does hearing that a woman had such a memory pass the basic “sniff test” of authenticity, or does it set off alarm bells? Just curious.
The woman with this memory *was* a teacher at BHO's school in Hawaii. So she would have some reason to refresh the memory, but it would have been a minimum of 10+ years later, probably more like 15, because she was a *high school* English teacher. So the specificity is still suspect, and the death of the doctor she named still very convenient.
I was in 11th and 12th grade in 1961. I can remember a couple of conversations I had during that time. One was with the guy who became my husband for the last 42 years so he is a constant reminder of that one. The other was with a friend about whether I should go to Gr. 13(Ontario school system) which I did based a lot on that conversation so that makes it kind of hard to forget. I do think the woman is making up a story about the doctor though since by that time he was out of the baby delivery practice.