When I was about three years old we lived in a little ranch house on a cul-de-sac. We were right at the end, and our driveway opened onto the round paved end of the street. There was no through or cross traffic, and I was allowed to ride my tricycle there. But it was down at the other end of the street, where it intersected with another road, where the real action was. In the summer, an ice cream truck would stop at the intersection and all the kids who had a few cents would hear the truck’s bells and come to buy a treat. I think — this is something I don’t remember, but I’ve since decided it was probably the case — that I wasn’t allowed to visit the ice cream truck all by myself; it was a tricycle journey of several hundred feet, and my mom tended to be pretty protective. At least she was when I was just three, which is what I think I was. But my memory is of a day that I rode my trike down there by myself anyway, and managed to buy a soft-serve ice cream cone. I don’t think I have a clear memory of the truck, but I’ve since concluded that it must have been the Mister Softee truck, which was the one with the soft-serve. The other ice cream truck was the Good Humor truck, and that one had wrapped treats in freezer cases. The two ice cream vendors must have had some sort of agreement about their routes, because I’m pretty sure there was never a day when they both stopped by. There may have been a schedule, but I do remember that at that age I didn’t know what it was. The bells on one truck or the other were always an announcement that I waited for, but I think I couldn’t predict. All I remember is that I didn’t know when I’d hear the bells, or which kind of ice cream it was going to be on any given day.
The main scene in this old memory of mine is pedaling back home with my ice cream. It was a hot day — it must have been, even though I have no memory of the feeling of it. But it was hot, because as I pedaled, my ice cream melted. It dripped into the red-and-white plastic horn mounted on my handlebars. It’s always been my belief that the horn was new, but all I have to go on is a general sense that it might have been, because I remember my disappointment when I arrived home and finally noticed all the melted ice cream dripped into my horn. Do I remember the taste of the ice cream? No. Did I get into trouble for riding that far by myself? I have no idea. All I can offer is that the dripped ice cream solidified, which surprised me, and my prized red-and-white plastic horn never worked again.
There are no adults in this memory, and my surroundings are just a blur. I can’t tell you what I was wearing, nor the color of my tricycle. But my horn was red and white, at least it as far as I know.
I seem to have an enormous number of memories of events that happened (as far as I know) at different times in my life. I invariably think of them as things that happened “to me,” although the “me” has been enormously different at different times. Ages, sizes, abilities, knowledge, perceptions — all of these differ. I’ve read that it’s most likely that not a single atom from the person whose ice cream melted still remains as a part of the person writing this. It sounds relatively plausible. So what exactly is the “me” in all these memories? It seems to be simply the memory collection itself, and whatever it is that can “play” the memories back and re-perceive them. As far as I know.
So is there such a thing as “the same person” at different times? The more I think about it, the less sure I am. There is some sort of continuity of memory, or there seems to be. I appear to be what I remember, and what remembers me is just the me doing the remembering. A strange loop indeed.
