The True Story I Made Up

In California last week, I was with my nieces, Nevuah and Aliyah, and told them a story from when they were kids thirty years ago that I’ve relayed often, but this was their first time hearing it.

When they were young, they came into town to visit my in-laws. After they begged me, I took them to Supercuts. This wouldn’t be an extraordinary story in any way, except they were raised in an Orthodox Jewish community and it was not customary for girls to cut their hair. I didn’t know and didn’t ask permission. When I brought them home with their hair lopped off, their father was livid. I felt awful and slightly terrified, so I steered clear for the rest of the time they were in town.  

After I told the story Nevuah said, “We did get our hair cut. But it didn’t happen like that. You took us back to your house and cut our hair yourself.”

“Oh, no!” I was emphatic. “I would never do that.”

“You did, Aunt Laura,” Aliyah said. “I remember sitting in your little bathroom on the toilet and you used safety scissors.”

Come on. I’ve been telling this story for years, so I remember what happened.

But two people who were there were telling me it didn’t, which is when it hit me: I made it up.

The thing is, the conjured story felt (and still feels) absolutely true. I can visualize the strip mall Supercuts, circa 1983. I can see Nevuah’s brown/black and Aliyah’s white-blond hair piled on the beige linoleum floor. But when I thought harder, the memory unspooled into my parents’ cramped first-floor powder room and a pair of safety scissors with hot pink handles.

At the time, I remember feeling frantic that my brother-in-law was so angry. I knew I overstepped. So, I created a more flattering story where I was just the hapless middleman.

It threw me a little, this realization that my memory isn’t reliable. That I am not reliable. What other real-life events had I plot-edited for entertainment value, or my own comfort?

It got me thinking. We tell our stories the way we want to remember ourselves. I wanted to be the cool aunt, not what I actually was in this was in this case: wrong. So, I took the scissors out of my hand.

I prefer the revisionist version, but I let go of it, because what’s true is true. Hair grows back. I love my nieces and they love me. The end.