This is the path that leads to my favorite thrift shop. Also, it's the (imagined)scene of the oddest and most vivid piece of false memory I ever experienced (although I have had other vividly realistic virtual experiences, when these occurred I was continuously conscious and fully aware of what was going on; therefore I do not consider them false memories).
Rancho Los Amigos is a rehabilitative hospital run by the County of Los Angeles. I happen to work a stone's throw from it, so I often go across the road and down this covered walkway to visit the hospital thrift shop where I've picked up many a knick-knack as well as some secondhand items of clothing. And almost every time, I encounter outpatients in wheelchairs along the way.
Once, while on my way to the thrift shop as usual, I saw Elizabeth Taylor coming toward me from the opposite direction. Yes, Elizabeth Taylor, the movie star. She of the lavender eyes; the oft-married icon of old-time Hollywood glamour; true friend to Michael Jackson to the end of his days. THAT Elizabeth Taylor. In a wheelchair.
She was alone as she rolled toward me, no bodyguards, attorneys or fawning attendants to stand between her and her public, and acknowledging little ol' cotton-pickin' me with a pleasant smile as she came. To my everlasting regret, I, the jaded(or considerate) veteran of life on the (distant)fringes of Hollywood, pretended the encounter was nothing extraordinary and did not slow my pace. Far be it from me to act like a bumpkin and crowd a legendary star by acting all awed and asking for an autograph!
So I continued to walk toward the thrift shop without looking back, and presumably Elizabeth Taylor continued to roll her way to the gold-plated and diamond-encrusted platinum limousine waiting in the parking lot just behind me, to whisk her off to her Olympian home grounds in Bell Aire or whatever exclusive neighborhood old movie stars with physical challenges roll around in these days...
Now, I'm fully aware that this encounter did not really take place. It is, as I stated, clearly a piece of false memory. Aside from the weird incongruity of the situation, I have no memory at all of when it occurred or of anything I did before or after the described scene. It's a stand-alone 'meme', unconnected to any others -- I think that's pretty telling.
I also have no idea why my mind would manufacture a false memory of seeing Elizabeth Taylor in a wheelchair on my way to a thrift shop that sells donated goods (granted, it is rather amusingly strange -- wacky, even; maybe my subconscious was in a mischievous mood). I've never been a big fan of Elizabeth Taylor, so it's certainly not a wish-fulfilling fantasy. Perhaps it's a snippet from an ordinary dream that somehow became lodged in my waking memory -- the sheer surreality of it certainly is dreamlike.
On the other hand, it still feels so real that had it been some other, less spectacular celeb -- a more 'realistic' and approachable personage, in other words -- instead of an impossibly lofty star like Elizabeth Taylor, I might well be convinced I really did see him/her in real life. If it had been Jack Elam (the scruffy, wall-eyed veteran of many westerns) for example, instead of Elizabeth Taylor, the illusion would have been more convincing. That is, of course, if I didn't know Jack Elam was long deceased, may he rest in peace (or on the other hand, I might have come away convinced I had seen Jack's wheel chair-bound ghost in broad daylight!). Or Walter 'Mr. Chekhov' Koenig -- I absolutely would believe he went to Rancho Los Amigos to walk again after some accident. Keith Szarabajka, vampire hunter Holz from TV's 'Angel'? Sure, I can see him at the Rancho, why not. Mark Blankfield from the old 'Fridays' comedy show on ABC? Absolutely -- especially since I actually did see him once in a waiting room at the Kaiser Permanente hospital on Sunset Boulevard (did I really see him, though?).
[Just now, just for a moment I thought I'd actually seen Mark Blankfield not among the patients at Kaiser, but instead at the downtown court building, among the prospective jurors assembled there; but I believe I know why this little mental mix-up happened -- the last time I reported there for jury duty, someone at the office said Brad Pitt had recently come in for jury duty, too -- my brain momentarily mixed up the two 'Middle-Aged White Male Actor' memes -- see how easily it can happen? Wow!]
I wonder if this sort of thing is common...
1. When our friends tell us that they spotted so-and-so from such-and-such movie at the Book Soup or driving down La Cienega, did they really see them?
2. What are we to think when someone says in all sincerity that one night many years ago, while they were driving down a lonely, dark road, their car was buzzed by a UFO?
3. Or that they saw the scary old lady who lives down the lane conversing with a black dog with flaming eyes and human hands? 'Witches' have been burned for less.
4. Or that they got snatched by little gray aliens who probed their privates aboard a flying saucer?
5. And what about prophets and visionaries who start entire cults and religions on the basis of personal revelations, and persuade people to engage in actions that damage their lives and those of others?
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