We all agree, more or less, that the break in continuity—the first one, the one that most of us remember—occurred in July, near the beginning of my summer holiday. Minor breaks may have happened before then. The problem—well, one problem, anyway—is that none of us have had exactly the same experience. For me, that first day went like this.

My wife, who was still Darlene then, sat in the living room in a recliner, nursing a twisted ankle and watching an afternoon soap opera. Meanwhile, I was finding nothing of interest in the morning’s newspaper.

Darlene looked over at me. “David, go upstairs and fetch my hairbrush, will you? I want to do something with this mess.” She motioned at her hair, which, to my eyes, looked perfectly fine. She was sending me upstairs for other reasons—she was bored, and I was reading the newspaper and not showing much interest in her. We both knew that.

A few minutes earlier, she’d dismissed my suggestion that she re-wrap and ice her ankle. An hour before that, she’d insisted that she didn’t need an over-the-counter pain reliever. So I knew she could make the walk herself. And still I said, “Sure. On the dresser?”

“Should be. Thanks, dear.”

I put the paper down, climbed the fourteen steps to the second floor, turned right at the landing, took a few paces to the bedroom door, and turned left to enter. The dresser, just inside the door, held the brush. I turned left again.

Easy enough to recall, right? It should be, but my memories aren’t consistent. When I try to reconstruct any past event, especially this one, I can’t be sure if I’m remembering what happened or what I believe happened. Sometimes I remember two or three different versions, and they all seem equally real, equally plausible. It helps if I try to remember an event as a series of steps, a sequence of turns, or a set of linked actions. The wonky memories usually fail the chronology test.

So. While I’m fairly certain of some things about that day, I’m unsure of others. I know it was in July because I had finally cleared mental space from the previous year’s teaching but hadn’t yet begun prepping for the start of school in September. In August, I’d re-read the novels I’d teach, but I was nowhere near ready to start that yet.

Here’s another thing I know. That day, when I turned left into the room, I knew in a fraction of a second that someone else was in the room with me, and a collision was imminent. My next step would send me right into him, and him into me. Simultaneously, we both tried to stop, both raised an arm in self-defense—he his left arm, I my right. But it was too late. Momentum carried us into each other.

And yet—the “unavoidable” collision never happened. Instead, I toppled forward, arm outstretched, straight into the side of the dresser, which shook. I rebounded to the floor with a crash.

No one else was in the room. But someone had been there—an intruder.