Just before the call cut off, she heard Trayvon Martin say, “Get off. Get off.”

[Igel]

59. Memories are malleable.

Most of my early childhood memories are derived from photographs. Otherwise, I have none. But my memories seem real. They're fake.

Once I was accused of saying I'd erase all the data at my place of employment; I said there was no backup system, and if something happened there'd be a really bad data loss. At the time, there were three people in the room. One had left town before I was accused.

I was, however, accused by three people, siblings. They were unimpeachable. Until I was talking to one of them alone and asked who was in the room. She thought, and said her sister. I asked where the guy was and she said there were just the three of us. "Why were we there?" She remembered we were playing bridge and there were four of us: her, her sister, me, and the other guy (call him "F&quot . But there were just three people in the room--and she realized that her sister wasn't there and F was. Her sister was in the bathroom and couldn't have heard what I said.

So she called her sister over, and her sister said she was there at the time. The other guy ... she wasn't sure. She recalled we were playing bridge and decided that since her brother was there it had to be him (call him "C&quot . Then she called C over, and he said he was there. The four of us. But he said couldn't have been bridge we were playing. He'd never played. Didn't know how to play. But it was just the four of us. F wasn't there.

C's wife was there and asked when it was. They all agreed--it was some holiday or long weekend, so it was notable. She promptly said it was impossible for her husband to be there. It was her brother's birthday party and they went to that. She pulled out her planner. She and her husband weren't just at the party--they'd planned it. He insisted he was there--and said what we had for dinner, who was there, what we did that evening, etc., etc. Right down to who sat where at the table.

I asked them what I said. They all answered at once, but it seems I managed to say three different things. It took them a few minutes to start remembering all the same thing.

I left as they started to fight over other parts of their memories. One sister realized that she was in the room with me and F. The other sister insisted she was in the room and her brother confirmed it. The brother was arguing with his wife and brother-in-law because they both said he couldn't have been there and he insisted he was.

The fight happened less than two months after the events they were arguing over. Two had fabricated memories--one of something that occurred when she was out of the room, the other created memories for an entire evening. An evening that was really quite unmemorable or unremarkable.

Now, take a 16-year-old girlfriend whose boyfriend was killed and whose testimony might be crucial in nailing the guy who shot him. Consider the claim that there's no way she could embellish or change a memory, even accidentally.