Part II of Stories We Tell

OK, now for Part II. If you have not gone ahead and listened to Malcolm Gladwell's Season 3 podcasts 3 and 4 on Revisionist History, go back to the prior post, click the link and I will wait...I will just look at the trees....If you are too busy, then it is your loss. I mean really. You would enjoy it.

OK. Here are three versions of the same event.  (I actually tried to search my blog to see if I had written about this story before but could find nothing, so maybe I am not repeating myself after all!)

I worked as an au pair for a family in Hawaii while I was in graduate school. They gave me food and a place to live and that saved me tremendously so that I could get my degree.

Version 1.
One afternoon my employer came to me to let me know they were having company for dinner and instead of eating with the kids (which I did when they had company), she asked if I would join them for dinner to make it a "foursome." She explained the young man they had invited was a biologist at the University. He had become a friend on a cruise that her husband had taken. They explained he was a bit nerdy on science and maybe somewhat intense, but I might find him interesting and they just wanted a fourth to balance the table. I reluctantly agreed as I was in the middle of mid-terms.  I figured that I would not join them for pre-dinner drinks and work on my term paper and show up before dinner later.

Version 2.  
The man who came to dinner (my future husband) tells the story a bit differently.  He says that they invited him to dinner because they wanted him to meet a young woman that they thought he would like.  They explained that she was charming and interesting.  He had been complaining to them that he could never seem to meet a "nice girl."

(As an aside, I was dating a number, small number, of guys while attending graduate school. I am guessing they were not impressed with my selection of dates.)

Anyway, that night I arrived later than my future husband felt was polite form and we did not hit it off.  I completely forgot that he did not seem to be nerdy because he seemed to be so offended that I was not super eager to meet him.  I remember thinking he seemed so full of himself!  The evening did not go well.  Hubby says that I was really offish to him the whole night!

Needless to say, we did not begin dating right after.  We did run into each on campus a few times and slowly got to know each other, and because hubby is a determined person, we actually did start dating a month or so later.

This year we stopped by on our Hawaii trip to meet up with the couple that brought us together over 46 years ago.  They are now in their late 80's early 90's.  We told them our versions of the story and they do not remember the story as going either way.  They said they just remember inviting us to dinner as a break for both of us working so hard in school.

Clearly, the truth of the story is somewhere in the depths of each person's version both at the time and in the following years as it gets re-told.