Wheat Field Syndrome

I believe I just discovered a condition involving the mind that I call Wheat Field Syndrome. Wheat Field Syndrome is the ability to remember something that never happened.

I call it Wheat Field Syndrome for the following reason: I remember being in a record store when I was about twelve or thirteen - back in the days when long players were on vinyl - and seeing a Beatles album cover showing the Beatles at a distance, walking on a gray stone path through a large, expansive field of wheat, the sky in the background as amber as the waves of grain. The title was in a Roman font, located in the upper right hand corner of the sleeve, and a red border ran along the edge.

And of course, no such Beatles album cover exists. I somehow remember seeing it, though, so I remember something that never happened - unless I saw another band's LP cover from a distance and misread the lettering. So that's why I call it Wheat Field Syndrome.

Paul McCartney himself may have Wheat Field Syndrome. When he first thought up the tune to the song we know as "Yesterday," he was sure he'd heard it before, convinced that he couldn't have been lucky enough to think of it himself. So, by remembering that he'd heard it before, Macca remembered something that could never have actually happened.

I bring this up because last night, after I went to bed, I wondered if I had remembered to turn off the outside water spigot connected to our garden hose after having run the water around 8 P.M. I decided that I had, in fact, remembered to do so. But I went to check it anyway, and sure enough, I hadn't. The water was still on, and it was leaking out of the spray nozzle. I turned it off and went back to bed.

It was a good thing I did turn it off, as our water bill would have been astronomical. Still, I distinctly remember having turned it off earlier when in fact I had not. So I was remembering something that hadn't happened.

Wheat Field Syndrome.

Oh well, I guess we all misremember things sometimes. Just don't tell my mom I left the outdoor water spigot on for five hours.

And I probably never did see a record sleeve from anyone, never mind the Beatles, like the one I just described.

As the cartoon version of George Harrison said in Yellow Submarine, "It's all in the mind."