My great-aunt Ruth remembered a cute story that took place in my Mother’s grandparents home when my Mother was a small child. It involved Mom walking around the house and mentioned the northeast bedroom.
The northeast bedroom?
As I read it, I scrunched my nose and made that face when I am certain that something is wrong. My own grandparents had lived in the same home for thirty years. I had been in it often. There was no northeast bedroom. The entire north side of the house was the living room. Then I remembered.
My Grandparents, not needing two downstairs bedrooms and two upstairs bedrooms, had taken down a wall and enlarged the living room. The seeming error in my great-aunt’s story was not an error at all. My personal memory was the problem. It only extended through my life time. Fortunately upon reflection, I realized I had additional information.
In this case the discrepancy was small and my memory of what I had been told was able to rectify it. Many times that is not the case.
Don’t assume that someone else’s memory is incorrect. It could be that your personal knowledge is simply incomplete.
2 Responses
Michael, I love this story because it illustrates that your family used directions of the compass to distinguish where things were or would have been. I tend to think this is true for people from west of the Mississippi which you technically aren’t, but many people born & raised in the eastern United States don’t have the same internal compass that “Westerners” do.
As someone born & raised in Oklahoma, I have no idea what it would be like to wake up in the morning & not know where North is. My dear late husband, born & raised in Delaware, had quite a good sense of direction but had no idea what to do if he was told to drive west. His family would have had to describe the northeast bedroom in relation to whatever was next to it. I’ve found that true of lots of Easterners, not just a peculiarity of the Sutton family.
Some of us always have to know where “north” is. Others are directionally challenged. I’m just glad I have the story and remembered the house details. It was torn down several years ago.