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THE_FORGETTING_OF_THINGS_PAST

                                             January 12, 2022

A memory of a memory:                                  CLEARENCE

Once upon a time in the mid-1990s, in
a discussion of what I like to call
"Gunga Din Syndrome" on usenet,            GUNGA_DIN_SYNDROME
someone accused me of never actually
having read the poem "Gunga Din".


This struck me as a silly random shot, so I
declined to comment on the point, and that
disciplined gap in the flow of conversation
succeeded in wedging the point in my mind, so
that years later I was still thinking about it...

I decided to write something about it, but it
made no sense whatsover to actually post it
anywhere, so that meant "it's bboard time"-- I                             
posted it to the Stanford University "bboard",        And in that obscure       
by then a pale shadow of it's former self, but        publication venue, my     
still a fine place for completely random remarks      original post went        
on any subject.                                       the way of all bits.      
                                                      And many years            
                                                      afterwards I've now       
    Here's the-- exceedingly minor-- puzzle:          decided to re-create      
                                                      it from memory.           
    *Had* I read "Gunga Din"?                                                   
                                                                               
    I am indeed the kind of person who reads things,
    and the idea that someone is going to come up
    with a gotcha like this with me is pretty weak--
    many other gotchas are possible, but the odds
    that I haven't read something I'm talking about
    are pretty low (not zero, but low).

    Accusing someone of not having read "Gunga Din"
    seemed remarkably odd-- it's not like it's a
    long piece, and it's not like there's anything
    particularly difficult about it--

    And in point of fact, I could quote lines from
    "Gunga Din" from memory, obviously I've read it.

    Except... this is a pretty famous poem, with pretty
    famous lines, and some that I think I remember from
    reading it I could be remembering from a quotation,
    e.g. the close of the Cary Grant movie "Gunga Din".

    So I went and picked up my volume of Kipling, and
    I noted that there was actually a bookmark at
    this particular poem, which seems to indicate I'd
    looked at it before... but it was at the *front*
    of the poem, so it *could* be I'd marked it with
    the *intention* of reading it, but never got to it.

    So I read through it-- for the first or second time--
    and found some bits were familiar, others I didn't
    remember, but those weren't so striking that you
    would think it strange I didn't remember them.

    As expected, nothing in the text of the poem indicated
    to me any sort of confusion in my mind when I
    started using the phrase "Gunga Din Syndrome".
    If my original interlocutor *wasn't* just making
    a random shot, I certainly couldn't see what
    target he was aiming at.


                  So there you have it--

                  A fine example of
                          
                    o  Fallible memory undermining the    
                       point of a life spent learning.                         
                                                           IN_THE_IRON_MASK
                    o  Meaningless online disputes one      
                       would be justified in forgetting,    
                       however difficult that can be.       
                                                            
                                                            
                                                           







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