“My uncle used to ski with Stephen King.”

This was the data point I would toss out whenever the famous writer’s name would come up in conversation. It sounded cool, and I had heard about this connection many years ago as a young kid. Or at least that’s what I thought that I had heard.

I recently saw my uncle, and decided to fact check this urban family legend. Was it true, or was it something that had been spun from a far more tenuous connection? As it turns out, I’ve been perpetuating a myth for more years than I would care to remember. Sure, both my uncle and Stephen King attended the University of Maine at Orono at the same time, and yes my uncle was on the college’s cross-country ski team– but never did the two meet for any sort of a skiing social activity.

This grown-up clarification made me wonder how many more stories in my mental catalog were composed of half or even non-truths. Between you and me, I would guess that the lion’s share entail at least some element of hyperbole.

One would think that the virtue of adulthood is our ability to record experiences with confident impartiality. You no longer wear the glasses of naïveté as you once did in childhood. Further, as adults we roam the earth enjoying a plateau of education and awareness– surely all of our memories and observations can be judged as more or less reliable, can’t they?

A few days ago, I visited our family camp– the New Englander’s concept of a cottage-like house that is located in northeastern Maine. My great-grandmother purchased it back in the early 20th century, and I used to go there every summer as a kid. Now an adult, the day I was leaving again found me standing by the water with my 95-year-old grandfather. We were staring out at nothing in particular, just as New Englanders are wont to do, but from time to time we remarked at the winds coming off East Grand Lake. In body, my grandfather is as healthy as can be, but in mind he no longer remembers who I am. As we stood by the dock leading out to his motorboat, he pointed at the fishing shed, painted fire brick red to match camp’s main structure and boathouse.

“That there,” he said, “used to be a bath house when I was a kid. People who wanted to come over and swim would change into their bathing suits if they needed.”

I had no idea that the old shed once served a different function, and not for one moment did I doubt the reliability of my grandfather’s recollection. His short-term memory might be shot, but his long-term souvenirs are as good as they have ever been.

I walked back inside to grab my belongings, and in doing so I came upon my aunt. She is now more or less my grandfather’s day-to-day caretaker, and I told her about the shed’s newly discovered history.

“What did he tell you?” she replied after I recounted the story. ” No it wasn’t. It was never a bath house!” She shook her head as if this was a continuation of her father’s deteriorating memory. Just at that same moment, my uncle came into the hallway and caught the tail end of our conversation. “What isn’t?” he asked me.

I repeated the story I had just heard out by the dock, and he nodded his head in contradiction to his wife. “Yes it was,” he affirmed with characteristic Maine simplicity. “It used to be a bath house.”

“It did?” said my aunt, suddenly changed by the independent validation. “Oh,” she said simply, now accepting the story as fact.

Suddenly I found myself in a multigenerational experience of the elusiveness of memory. I felt just as unmoored as my aunt and now increasingly forgetful grandfather.

We all move through life and pick up the stones that we find most compelling. Either they’re unique in shape and composition– or perhaps they are part of a significant memory that we’re keen to carry forward. These souvenirs, unfortunately, are by design kept to a minimum given the tiny space that we have for them in our future lives. For me, standing at a Maine shoreline offered up a multitude of attractive options that I’d love to stash in my suitcase, but at the end of the day I knew that most must be left behind– perhaps never to be visited again. Such is life. Such is memory.

I find it fascinating how we pick and choose our memories– and often these recollections are far from what the truth ever actually was. Regardless of veracity, these moments are touchstones that ultimately shape how we conduct ourselves in terms of self-protection and interaction with others on the planet. It’s what makes us who we are, and it is a subjectivity that is truly difficult to alter.

I really haven’t reached any useful conclusion by way of this discovery in bullshit story perpetuation. I am quite at peace with the fact that there are plenty of other questionable stories that I will continue to tell, and perhaps accordingly I recognize that I have imperfect memories that shape my day-to-day comportment. This is the way that we all are, and there is no point in second-guessing our mental faculties to the point where we lose self-confidence.

I guess that the best I can hope for is to remain willing to keep my mind open to the possibility that I might be wrong about certain things. Or at least appreciate that my experiences and eyewitness accounts can differ wildly from those of the person standing right next to me. It’s what makes the world both great and infuriating. With never a dull moment, I’ll never grow tired of untangling our shared histories. And I’ll also never grow tired of appreciating folks like my grandfather who have so much to share, if only you’ll give them the chance to tell their version of a story.