A brain doesn’t store memories like files in a computer —it reconstructs them on demand with electricity and swirling chemicals. We call this process remembering but it’s really assembling.

—Lisa Feldman Barrett

When I was a teenager, my father bought a sailboat. He barely knew how to sail, but he liked the idea of having a sailboat. He liked the idea of having a sailboat so much that he bought a second one, though the first one sat on a trailer and never touched water. The new thirty-foot trimaran (three hull-ed sailboat) rested in a slip south of Los Angeles in the San Pedro Harbor.

My father hired an experienced sailor (I’ll refer to him as the “sailor”) to do some custom woodwork in the small cabin below the deck and subsequently sail with us to a new slip in Santa Barbara. We set sail in the early afternoon, a crew of the hired sailor, his wife, my parents, my older brother, and me. We were looking at an approximate sail time of three hours. Soon after we left, there was no wind. No problem, we had an outboard motor. Soon we discovered we had the same amount of gas as we had wind. My father wasn’t much for details.

What are our assets?
—The Princess Bride

Stuck off the coast of Southern California, we had no wind, no gas, and we would soon realize, now drifting in total darkness, no running lights. The reason we’re not forever roving the ocean like a no-powered Flying Dutchman is because we had a ship-to-shore radio and a flare gun.

Emergency road-side service in California doesn’t extend west of the Pacific Coast Highway into the Pacific Ocean. Tow trucks don’t float. In coastal waters outside the harbor, emergencies are handled by the United States Coast Guard (USCG). So my father sent an SOS signal, which was answered by the USRC Cutter Morris.

“We have no wind and we have no gas. ”

“We can’t see your lights. ”

“We have no lights. ”

Lucky for us, the skipper was piloting a Coast Guard ship rather than a torpedo-equipped submarine.

Exasperated: “Do you have flares?”

“We have a flare gun with three flares. ”

“Shoot a flare. I’ll tell you when to shoot another. ”

We were about to be brought a few gallons of fuel by a 432-ton ship to power our 5-ton boat. There’s a carbon footprint we could be proud of.

Thanks to Cutter Morris, we had gas, which we poured into the boat motor gas tank. Things get a little fuzzy from here. My recollection is everyone over eighteen but my mother got sick from the gas fumes. The sailor’s wife felt worse than anyone, so the sailor took her below to the cabin. With my father and the sailor out of commission, my brother and I took over navigating and steered to an interim destination in Ventura. The next morning, we made our way to Santa Barbara. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, and it’s the story, decades later, I told my wife.

Rashomon on a Boat

But that’s not anyone else’s story. My visiting brother had a different memory of who got sick on the gas fumes and who guided the boat. What’s worse, I forgot that my visiting cousin from Chicago was on the trip. My memory was that the trip took place after I was let out of high school that day—a recollection only because I recall wearing new deck shoes (rubbered-soled shoes designed to grip a boat deck) to school for the occasion. However, my cousin would have been still going to school in Chicago and not visiting at the time.

My parents were deceased, so obviously would not be contributing to this memory, but my wife had her laughs while my brother and I told divergent stories, and later my cousin had yet another variation.

Oh, one more thing. When my wife read this, she said, “you’re wrong, your parents were with us when you told your versions.”

If you wrote your autobiography or went to a psychotherapist, you would tell your story: This is how I grew up. This is what my parents and siblings were like. This is what happened to me at school. This is what happened in my jobs, or career. This is what happened in my marriage(s). You have a story you carry in your subconscious at all times. These aren’t memories, they’re your stories, and they change over time.