Summary

In “The Little Room (Or, The Unreality of Memory),” Gabbert describes her maternal grandmother’s house. In her memory it was preserved “like a museum” (97). Now that the house is no longer in her family, it feels “strange and magical” (99). She wishes she could bring John there, and show him how it looked to her as a child.

Gabbert describes the Mandela Effect as “the theory that a collective false memory is evidence of a crossing or merging of parallel universes” (99, 100). It originated with confusion over Nelson Mandela’s death. Though he “died at home . . . in 2013,” many believed he “died in prison in the ‘80s” (100). The Mandela Effect is evidenced in the Berenstain Bears and Shazaam debates, too. In both instances, a false collective memory emerges and gains “detail over time,” as minds “fill in gaps” borrowed “from...