Wheels in Your Mind Keep on Turning

Friday, Ian rode his bike from school to the Friday Farm Market, locked his bike to a tree, bought two servings of pad thai at the pad thai stand (he wanted a second serving for dinner) and then he met his friend Ben and then went to some wall and played some kind of wall ball and then he walked home with Ben and his giant styrofoam container of pad thai and he totally forgot about his bike, still chained to a tree near Main Street, and this morning, when he remembered about his bike and went to retrieve it, it was gone-- stolen-- but the lock was still there, wrapped around the tree, locked, and he swears that he did actually lock his bike to the tree and that he did actually scramble the combination . . . but there's something weird about the story-- perhaps someone picked the lock?-- but then why would they reattach the lock to the tree?-- and I think we're going to have to chalk this up to the fallibility of human memory . . . that's the theme of the newest Revisionist History podcast, "Free Brian Williams," a fascinating story about how easily human memories get distorted-- and while I must warn you that Malcolm Gladwell is at his most annoying in this episode, I will also admit that it's a fascinating and compelling story and I'm glad I finished listening to it right before I heard my son Ian's story, because it made me a bit more empathetic to his tale of woe (also, we're in the market for a used bike).