By: D.D. Howard
The Mandela Effect. That phrase never meant anything to me. Spooky, I guess, but it wasn't something I thought about for more than five minutes. I mean, honestly, until college, I didn't even know what it was. I'm not one for conspiracy theories or ghost stories or anything like that, so what would you expect? I wish I was still so ignorant.
It all began in my Life Science class. I was twenty at the time, and it was pretty close to the end of the Fall Semester at FSU. My professor, Doctor Arnault, had given us our finals early, because she had a heart and didn't want us to be studying for everything at once. She figured doing our finals before everybody else's gave us time to study hers without any distraction, and then gave us time to study everybody else's with a little less stress.
I loved her for that.
But part of me wishes she never had decided to bless us that way.
On the last day of class, most people skipped. Everybody knew we weren't really doing anything and everybody just wanted to be done for the semester. Still, some of us were bound by the attendance policies on our scholarships, and others, just out of courtesy to Doctor Arnault, showed up. I personally was present because I loved her class.
One more hour and fifteen minutes of her teaching was a win for me. And, hell, I had nothing better to do.
She began the class slightly differently than she usually did. We'd often start out with a current event from earlier in the week- something about GMO's, the dramatically declining population of giraffes, or something else relating to life science. But today, we looked at an older article, and something far from relative to biology. It was about the Mandela Effect. I'd never heard of it before; most of us hadn't. But she was passionate about it. The old lady was usually pretty sprightly while teaching, choleric when somebody disagreed with her- but, man, today she was ecstatic.
"All right. To those of you considerate enough to show up to my class today, I have a treat for you. I'm going to teach you all about something that you'll probably never forget. Or maybe you'll blow it off; I don't know. But if this intrigues you like it did me, I'm sure you'll be happy you arrived. Can somebody tell me when Nelson Mandela died?"
Everyone looked around confusedly. Then a girl raised her hand.
"He died a couple years ago. 2012 I think."
She slowly nodded, studying the class like she was waiting for something. And she found that something.
"Seagrave," she pointed at a boy in the class, "why the confused face?"
"Well, uh, I thought he died like, a while ago. The nineties or something. In prison."
She beamed with delight.
"Well, class? Is Amanda right? Or Cole?"
Everyone seemed conflicted. Most of us were like me and honestly had no clue. But a couple people agreed with Cole, and one other person agreed with Amanda.
"Amanda," Dr. Arnault commended, "you're closer to correct. He died from a respiratory tract infection on December 5th, 2013. But, why did some of you think he died in prison in the early nineties, then? Several of you thought that. Badaar," she motioned at one of the guys to explain, "where'd you come to that conclusion."
"I could swear we learned that in seventh grade. In my world history class. It was part of black history month."
"Yeah, same here," one of the girls nodded. "Black history month when I was a kid. He died and then there was this thing about his wife trying to sue some company...?"
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