Ever been informed of something you did which is totally brand new news to you?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Well, yes. But it had nothing to do with drinking.

As best I can put it together, I am missing about three hours of time from the delivery of my eldest child. The reason this is peculiar is that I am entirely unaware of any time missing; I believe that I remember the whole thing from start to finish. It feels that way in my memory and there aren’t any jarring inconsistencies in my memory.

However, one day when Eldest was about 2 and Youngest was not yet born but was cooking, Dearly Beloved said something about the time the nurse had me lie down, then climbed up on top of me and started pushing on my belly. I was quite surprised and said I was quite certain I would recall such an event had it occurred but he stuck to his story and even added some other events of which I have no recollection at all.

I found this rather upsetting so I called my mother (who was also present at Eldest’s birth) so she could verify that my husband had lost his mind in some unaccountable way for some inscrutable reason.

She said “You know, dear, sometimes your mind keeps things from you…”. It was the first time I understood the word “gobsmacked” in the fullness of its definition. I was gobsmacked, stunned, amazed. Some part of me still thinks it’s some kind of bizzarro conspiracy to make me think something happened that did not, because I still have absolutely no vestige of an inkling of a sense that anything is missing in my memory.

But evidently there are three hours missing. During which I must say, nothing happened to Eldest except that he sat there and took a nap or something – the missing three hours are between the time he crowned and the time he came out. The baby monitor shows that he was very happy during those three hours. I gather that I was not but…I don’t remember them at all. Still don’t.

42

Not true in all cases, as has been pointed out. I’ve never been a serious drinker – social only, even in my teenage party days.

My one and only case of ever blacking out was probably explicable by what I was drinking. A buddy of mine was house-sitting for his well-to-do lawyer dad – gorgeous house, even if it wasn’t huge. Lots of oak and leather. Banks of law books, as one might expect. At any rate his father had apparently smuggled in some Jamaican “High Wine” from his last trip to (where else?) Jamaica. So we raided it. For those not in the know, High Wine is 180-proof rum. Yes, 180. Surprisingly smooth going down, not at all the fiery burn I expected. I mixed a Rum & Coke with it, 20:80 (rum:coke). Went down well, was already feeling good 'n buzzed after finishing, so I mixed another – stronger, about 30:70. “I can handle it!” I thought. Ah, exuberant, immortal youth. The last thing I remember was lounging on the couch while the world around be got darker and darker. The next thing I remember was waking up seated on the floor, straddling an impressive floor pizza I’d made and had absolutely no recollection of making.

Cleaning that up the next morning is not precisely conducive to recovering from a night of profound inebriation.

I didn’t have a hangover, though. I’ve never had one of those, actually. I just feel pasty the next morning, but never painful.

I haven’t gotten that drunk (or anything more than a light buzz) since the early 90s though.

43

Plus, lots of alcoholics don’t black out.
I am pretty sure I can consider myself an alcoholic, but I never drink myself into a stupor.
Doesn’t alcoholism also increase your resistance to alcohol?
I would think that an alcoholic would have a much harder time getting drunk to the point of blacking out, than someone who only involves in binge-drinking once a month.

44

I have been falsely recognized in a lot of situations.
But that is common for a twin.

45

Um… this is demonstrably untrue, if you accept an anecdote as proof. See, I’ve been drunk a grand total of once in my life, and the event I blacked out for? Wasn’t that time.

Many of my friends who were with me at a convention some years ago all remember me tying a sheet around my neck, proclaiming that I was Superman, and leaping onto the hotel bed. I do not recall this and furthermore insist that I would never be that stupid. Nor was I drinking that night – not even a glass of wine with dinner. Zip, nada, zero, zilch, nothing.

The bill I got from the hotel corroborates their story. They charged me for a broken bedframe.

I do not recall this event at all, and can only chalk it up to (a) sudden, inexplicable amnesia, or (b) massive sleep deprivation.

46

Well, mine isn’t quite in the same theme as everyone else’s.

My ex and I got divorced over about 17 years ago. It wasn’t a pleasant divorce- she left me for my best friend, and it was pretty hard on me. All of our friends sided with her, and since I didn’t really have any family, I had to go through it all by myself. I almost didn’t make it.

Well, about ten years later, we were still barely able to talk to each other. We met downtown one time to hash out some lingering legal issues, and got into a bit of an argument. Then she said, “I can barely stand to look at you. You’re just lucky that I couldn’t press charges on attempted rape.”

“I’m sorry- what was that?” I couldn’t believe she’d just said that.

“When you tried to rape me. When I came over to get my stuff after I’d moved out. You tried to tie me to the bedpost to rape me.”

I could tell that she was completely serious. I was completely shocked- it all made sense, suddenly. My friends had abandoned me during the divorce, and had all sided with her. I remembered something my ex-friend had said, something which at the time had seemed very strange- he’d said, “I can’t believe you did that.” At the time I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, but suddenly I knew what he’d meant.

For a second, I wondered if it had actually happened- as I said, it had been a rough divorce for me… maybe I had tried to rape her, but I was blocking the memory?

But then I remembered something else: “Uh… we didn’t HAVE a bedpost. We didn’t have a headboard. Our mattress was directly on the floor. I COULDN’T have done that.”

It was weird- as soon as I said that, I could see her realizing that it had never actually happened. She dropped the subject immediately, and has never brought it up again. I suspect that she’d felt guilty for leaving me, and had made up the story to get sympathy from our friends- and that after a while, she started to “remember” it as having actually happened. But when I reminded her that it was impossible for it to have happened, she suddenly remembered that she’d made it all up.

For several years after that, I was tempted to call up my old friends to tell them that I now understood why they’d cut off all ties with me… and that it had never actually happened. I never did, though- I figured that everyone that had believed her story back then would never believe the truth now.

So, yeah- there’s the story of the thing I didn’t do. I still don’t like talking about it, and it’s why I feel that false accusations of rape should be as bad a crime as rape itself. I’d been found guilty by all of our friends, without even being given a chance to defend myself.