Reality Is Gaslighting Me

Bass Pro Shops lost its singing fish, Starbucks moved into Macy’s, Fruit of the Loom misplaced an entire cornucopia, and now photographs are apparently editing themselves.

Readers, do you believe in the Mandela Effect?

Because I do.

I am not casually interested in it. I am not merely entertained by the theory while watching TikToks at midnight. I believe some of us are walking around with memories from a different timeline, and the rest of you are either from this one or have simply agreed to participate in reality’s elaborate cover up.

For example, Sinbad played a genie in a movie called Shazaam. I saw it. Multiple times.

I know people will immediately rush in to tell me I am confusing it with Kazaam, the movie where Shaquille O’Neal played a genie. I am not. I know who Shaq is. I know who Sinbad is. Those are two entirely different men, Readers. My childhood brain was not simply tossing every tall man wearing colorful clothing into one large genie folder.

Sinbad wore the genie outfit. The movie existed. I watched it.

Yet apparently, according to this timeline, there was never a Sinbad genie movie. There was no Shazaam. Sinbad never played the role. We all collectively invented an entire movie, complete with scenes, costumes, and memories of watching it.

Absolutely not.

Then there are the Berenstain Bears. Except they were not the Berenstain Bears. They were the Berenstein Bears. I remember seeing the name on the books. I remember hearing it pronounced. I remember that little family of bears teaching us lessons about lying, messy rooms, going to the dentist, and whatever other childhood crisis Mama Bear was forced to handle while Papa Bear remained largely useless.

It was Berenstein. With an E. Now I am expected to believe it was always spelled Berenstain, with an A, and that millions of us simply failed to read the title correctly for our entire childhoods. Readers, we were children, not illiterate woodland creatures.

At some point, the spelling changed. Or the timeline changed.

These are the classic Mandela Effects. The ones people argue about online while someone confidently explains that memory is unreliable and our brains merely fill in details that were never there.

That explanation may be scientifically reasonable. But I reject it.

I prefer the alternate timeline explanation because it makes far more sense than believing millions of people independently invented the same genie movie and misspelled the same bear family’s name for several decades.

But lately, the Mandela Effect has stopped being something from my childhood or a strange internet rabbit hole.

Now it is following me around.

This all started with the singing fish. When we went to Vegas a few weekends ago, we were at Bass Pro Shops. Before we went inside I told the kids that we had to find the mounted fish that sang when you pushed a button.

In my memory, the singing fish was not merely something I once saw hanging on a random wall. It was connected specifically to Bass Pro Shops because I remember buying one there when I was younger.

This was not some vague memory floating around without context. My brain did not randomly connect a singing wall fish to an outdoor sporting goods store decades later. I remember the transaction.

So naturally, we searched the store. We walked through the displays. We looked along the walls. We tried to find anything resembling the fish I had confidently promised the children would be there.

Nothing.

There were actual fish swimming in the tanks, of course, but they were entirely useless to my investigation. You could not push a button and make them sing. They contributed nothing to the case.

After we had searched the store and failed to find one, Bestie announced that I had made the whole thing up. Not that the store might have stopped selling them. Not that perhaps they had been discontinued sometime during the last several decades. No. According to Bestie, I invented an entire childhood purchase, attached it to a very specific store, and carried that imaginary memory with me into adulthood.

But Readers, I know what I remember. Bass Pro Shops sold the singing fish. I bought one there.

Case closed.

Except apparently there is very little proof connecting the famous singing fish directly to Bass Pro Shops, which only makes the entire situation more suspicious.

Then the universe came for my Starbucks.

Every time we stay at the Tower in Las Vegas, we go across the street to Fashion Show Mall. I know this mall. I have wandered through it tired, caffeinated, hungover, financially irresponsible, and occasionally with my feet attempting to detach themselves from my body.

And there was a regular Starbucks inside that mall. Its own storefront. Not the Starbucks outside along the Strip. Not a random coffee kiosk. Not the Starbucks inside Macy’s. I remember walking into the mall and entering an actual Starbucks. I remember ordering drinks there. I remember where it was.

This is not a blurry memory from thirty years ago. We were there earlier this year. But when I went looking for it again, suddenly the only Starbucks anyone could locate was inside Macy’s.

No.

Absolutely not.

I understand the difference between walking into Starbucks and walking into a department store. I may make questionable life choices, Readers, but I have not yet lost the ability to identify Macy’s.

Bestie insisted that the Starbucks had always been inside Macy’s. He said it with the confidence of a man who had personally designed the mall and approved every tenant agreement.

That is one of Bestie’s most dangerous qualities. Bestie could calmly announce that the Pacific Ocean had been relocated to Flagstaff, and he would say it with enough certainty that I would briefly consider checking Google Maps.

So now I had a singing fish that I distinctly remember buying at Bass Pro Shops and an entire Starbucks storefront that had apparently been swallowed by Macy’s.

That should have been enough.

It was not.

Then there is the photograph of Cory and his mom.

This one is different.

This is not a store I visited a few times, a movie from my childhood, or the spelling on a book cover. This is a photograph I have looked at over and over again. I know the people in it. I know their faces. I know the room behind them. And I swear there was never a hat hanging on the wall. There was a hook. Just an empty hook.

Then, about a week and a half ago, I looked at the photograph, and there it was.

A hat.

A whole hat hanging from the hook where I swear there had never been one before.

I stared at the photograph for far too long, trying to convince myself that I had somehow overlooked it. Maybe I had always focused so much on Cory and his mom that I never noticed the background. Maybe my brain had decided the hat was unimportant and removed it from the memory.

But I know that picture. I have looked at that wall. There was a hook. Now there is a hat.

The fish was funny. The Starbucks was irritating. But seeing something appear in a photograph of two people who are no longer here felt different. It felt like reality had quietly edited the background while I was not looking. Like the universe had changed one tiny detail in a familiar scene just to see whether I would notice.

Oh and also Readers, Fruit of the Loom had a cornucopia.

I will not be accepting opposing testimony at this time.

The fruit sat in front of one of those curved basket horn things. That is how many of us learned what a cornucopia was. Nobody was sitting in elementary school deeply invested in decorative harvest containers. We saw one behind the fruit on an underwear label and asked an adult what it was.

That cornucopia existed.

Except Fruit of the Loom apparently insists that it never did. According to the official version of reality, the logo has always been nothing but fruit.

No horn.

No basket.

No cornucopia.

That is simply incorrect.

I can see it.

Millions of people can see it.

So where did it go?

Is the cornucopia being stored somewhere with Sinbad’s genie movie, the original Berenstein Bears books, the Bass Pro Shops singing fish, and my missing Starbucks? Is there a warehouse between timelines containing everything reality has quietly removed? Because at this point, I would like access to the evidence room.

The logical explanation is that human memory is imperfect. Our brains combine similar images, places, names, and experiences until they create a version that feels completely real. Once enough people repeat the same mistake, it becomes a shared false memory.

Fine.

That is a reasonable explanation.

I still reject it.

My preferred explanation is that multiple versions of reality exist at once, and every now and then something gets moved during the transition.

In my original timeline, Sinbad starred in Shazaam. The Berenstein Bears were spelled with an E. Fruit of the Loom proudly displayed its cornucopia. Bass Pro Shops sold the singing fish I bought when I was younger. The Starbucks is exactly where I left it. And the hook behind Cory and his mom is empty.

Maybe there is another Sarah somewhere right now watching Shazaam while drinking coffee inside the missing Starbucks. Maybe she is reading a Berenstein Bears book to the kids while a singing fish performs on the wall behind her. Maybe she is wearing a Fruit of the Loom shirt with the original cornucopia logo while showing Craig and Bestie a photograph with an empty hook in the background. Maybe her version of Bestie believes her. Now that would truly be an alternate universe.

And I am not losing my mind, Readers, regardless of what Bestie tells the children.

Reality is simply gaslighting me.

Frankly, I would like to speak to management.