Beneath his bright, yellow backpack he wobbles up the street.

So small beneath his outsized potential.

He scans the horizon for the ice cream truck but it is not there. Like the brave warrior he is, he brushes this disappointment aside. He will show me his tree, his favourite tree.

It’s the third one.

He runs to the tree like a long lost relative, throws his arms around it. Can you remember the last time you did that? That something in this world struck you with such urgency you had to run to it? Not out of obligation, but passion. You burned for it. Not a second could be wasted. You just dropped everything and ran toward this light the future cast back to you.

I ask Jones what the tree’s name is.

“Paper.”

Sometimes his is such a small, unpredictable voice.

We talk to Paper for a little bit, and then Jones kisses him goodbye and we continue home. There is a giant stick. Things in a box. A white dog with crazy eyes. A university student speeding powerfully by on her skateboard. A truck that looked like the ice cream truck but was not. Another dog. A squirrel who made eye contact and then disappeared into a trash can.

These children, they give so much of themselves. Everything they have. Nothing held back.

And Jones is tired. He sits on the sidewalk, turns his attention to the ants. So many tiny ants. He marvels as they vanish underground and then reappear, each one the same, each one different, each one on a mysterious and dangerous journey upon which much depends.

A beautiful woman in a sundress,  her hair still wet from the morning shower, was trying to unlock a door. The sun was falling upon her, the wooden porch, the entire red brick face of the home. She didn’t have the right key and was struggling with the lock, with how her morning was assembling itself, and she tossed her head back in frustration. Tiny, almost imagined droplets of water were cast from her hair and caught in the sunlight, and everything seemed to stop for a moment. 

And then a raccoon, having slipped from night into day, emerged from behind a tree. With his detached animal knowingness he stared directly at us. Jones, astonished, squealed at the miracle, while the raccoon, keeping to the shadows, disappeared back into the night of some protective greenery. Up at the corner, at the mulberry tree and raspberry bushes,  so many berries had been crushed on the sidewalk that they looked like paintball splatters. There were berries hanging above us and growing from the earth beneath us, and it was like we’d passed into a different realm and were now moving through a fertile, green tunnel. As I was picking a raspberry for Jones, a woman sprinted by us toward the subway. Plugged into her iPhone, with a knapsack on her back and a briefcase in one hand, she was ready for the big meeting, ready to present the best version of herself to the world. She was moving fast, like an athlete who still retained her running form from college, days that had recently started to feel further and further away. 

An older man, immaculately dressed in wardrobe that looked from another century, ambled up the street coming to pass a college-aged woman wearing a bright yellow dress. Her face was still new, and she carried with her a pronounced, heaving limp that was mysterious and beautiful and sad, and when she smiled past us, there was the unexpected scent of clove cigarettes and skin cream. A butterfly then appeared and it was a sign. Perhaps a spirit guide, and Jones declared that we must follow it, and so we did– everything around us like still lingering dreams from the previous night, only now beginning to fade into the waking day.

He may not have been the “best” Bond, but he was my Bond, the one I grew up with.

My parents used to take me to his movies regularly, and it was always a thrill. The iconic, deadly cool theme music, the risque opening in which you could kind-of-and-kind-of-not see naked women, and then the whole camp fantasy of being a handsome and unflappable spy– it was all immensely appealing to a boy on the cusp of puberty.

Kind of like a Wes Anderson film, the Bond movies starring Roger Moore were a child’s vision of the adult world — a comic book fantasia made manifest, but one that promised to be safe, free from the dreary weight of all the unimaginable day-to-day realities that lay ahead.

I was 13 when Moonraker came out. Jaws, a lurching behemoth with steel fangs, was the primary villain, and he was awesome. At the end of the film, after Bond had coasted to victory and Jaws was pulling himself out of the rubble of some foiled plan, a tiny blonde– busty, pigtailed and bespectacled– appeared to help him. Jaws turns and smiles, his metal teeth glinting, and she smiles back. It’s love at first sight, and they then exit into some charming and eccentric future together.

What I remember, and what everybody I have asked remembers about this scene, is that the woman ( Dolly) had braces. This was what connected the two. In spite of their size difference, they were soul mates in braces. It was the sort of thing a 13 year-old kid, the type of kid who might actually have had braces, and that the movie was trying to appeal to, instantly related to. All of us watching, in the midst of our tortured, monstrous throes of puberty, hoped to find a Dolly, too. It was something that resonated deeply and stayed with us.

Anyhow, in returning to the YouTube clip of the scene, I saw that it was clear that Dolly did not have braces.

I mean, I had been fucking positive she had braces.

This braces-less reality seemed utterly impossible to me, like discovering I was a Replicant and not a human at all, but there it was.

No braces.

Anyhow, if like me, you remember Hannibal Lecter saying, “Hello, Clarice,” or Darth Vader intoning, “Luke, I am your father,” or Sally Field shouting, “You like me, you really like me!” while accepting an Oscar, then you have apparently experienced what I have just discovered is known as the Mandela Effect.

Now what the Mandela Effect is, is complicated, Internet complicated, and it’s layered in the sort of conspiratorial proofs that only online culture can provide.

Dive deep, if you wish:

Without tunnelling into the rabbit holes surrounding this phenomena, I will simply say that what clearly emerges from all this is that our memory, be it individual or collective, is incredibly unreliable. Sometimes, what we believe to be true, what we know in our bones to be true, what even our tribe agrees is true, is not true. Memory is mysterious, a product of our consciousness that is constantly being constructed and revised, existing as a work in progress rather than some immutable photograph we can reference at will. Everything is in flux, and the truth, as unpalatable as it is, is that we know nothing for sure, and are very, very easily manipulated. In the furious age of Trump, it’s wise to keep this in mind before launching a scorched earth assault on anything that might contradict our world view. We would all benefit from a little less certainty and a little more kindness, I think.

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Heidi have pen pal named Hobo.

Hobo a girl dog, so not what you think.

Hobo very cool dog. Hobo once petted by guy who play sexy werewolf Jacob on Twilght! Hobo also solve many crime with two-legged treat giver! Hobo have quite the resume.

Mostly Heidi and Hobo just exchange thoughts in emails. Kind of like journal workshop.

Sometimes Heidi and Hobo share feelings about smells. Heidi like smell of dead worm and other dead things and hate the smell of lamb! Hobo feel exact same way! Heidi hate stupid cat and Hobo hate stupid cat, too! Both like to kill cat! Trade stories of best way to send death to cat. Heidi want to kill cat by barking until little cat head explode, but Hobo want to kill cat by injecting with disease then when weak, rip throat out!!

Hobo very creative.

Heidi and Hobo like soul sisters.

Heidi share excerpt from letter Hobo wrote:

“Really like meat. Think meat all the time. Meat, meat, meat. You ever think of meat?”

Heidi think meat all the time!!

Like Hobo reading Heidi mind.

Heidi write this to Hobo:

“Hobo, do you like to hunt bugs? Heid fucking hate bugs!! Buzz, buzz, buzz! Heidi jump and snap and chase for hours! Heidi do whatever it takes! Heidi no bug zone.”

Hobo respond:

“Hobo hunt bugs, too. Kill all of them, even ladybugs. Ladybugs have attitude, think they better than Hobo, but not!! So Hobo eat them with her mouth!. Hobo very much want to kill squirrel and bat at same time. Fantasy Hobo have over and over again.  Do you think this makes Hobo weird?”

This real freak-out for Heidi because Heidi have same fantasy! Sometimes bird involved, too. Dream make Heidi leg twitch!

Uncanny how much Hobo and Heidi alike, but sometimes we disagree. Hobo think population have right to bear arms so to protect from cats and overthrow government if they seize control of meat or treat market. Heidi disagree and think more guns more danger for dogs! Dogs impulsive and emotional, they shoot first ask questions later! Exchange on matter become very heated, much barking. Hobo and Heidi not write for long time. Think on different spiritual paths, then hear that Hobo get sick! Hobo hit by two-legger steel fast machine! Put things in perspective. Heidi send Hobo postcard and hope can be friends again. Heidi want Hobo feel good so can kill cat with throat bite!