That, as you may or may not know, is a quote from Terry Pratchett's brilliant and highly successful series of Discworld books. But when, you ask, might that come into play in real life? I actually have done this twice in recent weeks. One time I created the mischief, another time it was someone convincing themselves of something that was not true. I describe them both below.
'Where's he gone?'
I was in the beautiful town of Chester during the Octobe Half Term holiday. It was gorgeous, the sun was shining, the birds were singing and we were going back to a car park. My dad and brother were some way in front and my mum, my gran and I were walking along talking. The conversation had got onto some topic, I can't recall what, but it didn't really include me. So I decided to try something. I dropped behind, as if to let them talk easier. Once or twice they turned around to say things to me and I mumbled a reply. Then I dropped even further behind, and even further. And they didn't seem to notice or do anything. Then, I crossed the road. It was quite and the car park was on the other side. And they still didn't notice anything! So you can melt into the background. You can be put entirely out of memory. They only noticed me, after all, when a couple of minutes later they too came to cross. They turned to face the road and, as traffic was coming along at that moment, said that I must have seen it was clear and crossed all by myself, how clever and sensible I was. I kept my trickery to myself although I am guessing a smile did flash across my lips. It had worked!
The Missing 10
My second observation comes about a week later. We had been doing some work in French that the teacher wanted to mark, so he took our books in. He had already explained the mark scheme. The next day we got our books back. I had got 26. One of the people in our class came up and said '26 out of 30, that's good, well done'. I thought this strange immediately. It was out of 40! I told him this and he replied 'No, it's out of 30, no-ones got higher than 30.' I wanted to leave it there. But this was obviously wrong, he had convinced himself of something based purely on what he had seen. And it was completely wrong. I explained the maths to him. There were 13 questions, 3 marks for each make 39. He then said he'd give all of us a bonus mark. It's out of 40. He still kept on that it was out of 30. I left it there. But it is interesting, isn't it. The way that someone puts the memories out of their mind. They don't think. They just look and assume. Well, I found it interesting anyway.
