A recently published study revealed that every time you remember an event in your life, the memory of that event is replaced with the most recent memory of that event. Therefore, the more you return to a memory, the more distorted it becomes, until you gradually lose factual parts of your experiences in your imagination of what they once were. A truly monumental study, when you consider how often our justice system depends on the accurate memories of witnesses, to be told again and again. If a case goes on too long, a witness may actually replace their memory of the crime scene with a false one. Be convinced that something really happened, or didn't happen. But for me, the consequences of remembering most commonly lie in the idea that you lose your childhood in proportion to the number of times you try to grasp it. The moment you try to hold the water in your hands, the faster it seems to flow through your fingers. I was reading up on Disney videocassette sales from the '90s for a seminar I'm taking, and I was taken aback by the sheer amount of Disney classics released on VHS in 1996. I was four years old. As I scanned those dates, I realized that I was born into the tech war between VHS and Betamax. Home video was a rising titan of the information age, and '95 was the year Dad finally admitted Sony's defeat, seven years after RCA officially crushed Beta's valiant effort at quality compared to quantity. Hell, I still remember the laserdisc player on the old wooden TV in the living room, now gathering dust in the second shed, the one with the planters. We had some Star Trek movies on Betatape. Once upon a time. Like most young fathers, Dad looked for the latest in technology... middle of paper... daughter Kelley can't put her nose on the snowman time and time again. Even in our younger moments, we were underdogs in a cruel world fighting for our purpose in the universe. Dad always wanted to raise strong girls. Years have passed, but my memory of that day has faded, from crawling across the yellowed kitchen floor under my mother's supervision to watching my frustrated sister struggle through the tempered glass of the Middletown house on Caroline. Avenue. My Christmases, birthdays, blizzards, and snow days have been replaced with reports of my parents' movie collection. Often in my daily activities I find myself recounting my ironic struggle through the most menial of tasks, or blogging about the greater meaning of my cord coiling up or my perception of a song, and I think to myself And the great story continues, in the Epic... of the Snowman!