I've told the story a million times, and it is clear and etched into my memory. My wife and I were watching the evening news on TV in Pittsburgh, and the ditzy little blond newscaster came out with the immortal line: "Groucho Marx took a turn for the worst today; in fact, he died."

I never saw the poor girl on TV again, although I do distinctly recall seeing her at the bookstore at Pitt a few weeks later, loaded down with textbooks, obviously training for a career other than television journalist. I remember telling myself, "Too bad she got sacked for that, Groucho would have loved it."

I got a shock tonight. I was watching a bio on Groucho Marx on TV this evening, and they mentioned he died in 1977. I quickly confirmed this by Googling his name, indeed, the great comedian passed away on August 19, 1977. There is no way I could have witnessed the event in my memory, I didn't move to Pittsburgh until October of 1978, and I didn't marry my wife until January of 1981. In August of 1977 I was still in Florida, wrapping up my thesis and sailing my boat in the Gulf of Mexico. I wouldn't be in Pittsburgh for over another year.

This is the second time (that I know of!) that I've had a false memory and been able to convince myself without a doubt that it was indeed false. Of course, I have no way of knowing if there are any others. When I was considering buying my house, in 1998, I demanded that the seller knock a hole in the closet wall (at my expense, along with the repair) so I could inspect the bathtub pan behind it to make sure it was not corroded and that the drain to the outside was clear. The pan is underneath the tub, in case the tub springs a leak, the pan prevents the foundation from becoming waterlogged and crumbling. I distinctly remember seeing the pan was ok, and with a flashlight I could see all the way to the exterior wall of the house and verify the drain leading outside was not clogged.

Several years later, I decided that it would be necessary to repeat this inspection periodically, and rather than have to knock a hole in the drywall every time, I hired a carpenter to come in and install a proper inspection port so a panel could be removed and a quick look taken without having to repair the wall. The carpenter did as I asked but behind the drywall was a solid sheet of fiberglass, from ceiling to footer. It was impossible to see the pan, in fact, it was impossible to see to the exterior wall of the house where the drain was. The fiberglass was apparently the backing to the bathroom wall, and the tiles were affixed to its other side. I realized there was no way I could have seen the pan and the outside wall, not without taking an axe to the fiberglass. And besides, behind the fiberglass was not the space under the floor, there was the bathroom itself. I had to dig up the floor under the tub to see the pan. My earlier memory was completely false, it COULDN"T have been true. Like the Groucho anecdote, it existed solely in my memory.

How does this happen, do you remember an old dream and mistake it for a real incident? Does the mind embellish a true scenario, or fabricate a detailed new one? I can see how you might add something to an existing memory, just like true tall tales seem to improve with the telling. But these were completely non-existent events with no particular emotional or psychological implications to justify their exitence.

Maybe this is what happened to Hillary with her memories of combat in the Balkans. I certainly can't believe she deliberately made it all up, even if she had wanted to; knowing it could be so easily verified or challenged because there were so many witnesses and file footage of the event. She knew she couldn't get away with a lie like that. Is this a common incident in people my and Hillary's age (60)? Or is this perhaps a symptom of something more serious, something more physiological?