Weird story

[Rolfe]

If someone else told me this, I wouldn't believe it. It's only because it happened to me that I'm still puzzling at it.

Many years ago, when I was at school, we had a Biology teacher called Mr. Brodie. One day we had Biology last period in the afternoon, and we were learning about the cabbage white butterfly. Near the end of the lesson Mr. Brodie told us about something called the ichneumon fly, which lays its eggs in the butterfly's chrysalis so it hatches ichneumon flies and not butterflies. Then the bell rang, and as schoolkids do, we stampeded for the door.

Next morning (not first thing, but before lunch) we had Biology again. Mr. Brodie started the lesson by asking, "Can anyone tell me about natural predators of the cabbage white?" I assumed he was checking to see if we'd been awake the previous afternoon, and as I remembered it perfectly well, I stuck my hand up. I was kind of surprised that mine was the only hand that went up, but I was that sort of kid.

I simply regurgitated everything I remembered him saying about the ichneumon fly, wondering vaguely why he looked so surprised. When I finished, he said "Where did you learn all that?"

"You told us yourself yesterday afternoon," I replied. At this point I simply assumed that he'd got further than he realised in his lesson plan, and had forgotten that he'd told us about that parasitic fly thing.

I looked round the class, expecting a reasonable number of other pupils to back me up on this. (This was a very high-level selective school, and the top stream of Biology pupils - SOMEBODY else had to have been awake. There were some very bright kids in that class.) Whole room full of blank stares. Not one person backed me up, in fact they were all quite adamant (some of the little swots even referring to notes) that he hadn't mentioned the damn fly.

Mr. Brodie just looked completely baffled, as if he thought I was playing some weird trick he couldn't quite figure, muttered something about "Well, the ichneumon fly - what she said," and went on with the rest of the lesson. None of the other pupils wanted to talk about it. I think they thought I'd read it up in a book and was trying to be clever.

Except - I really did have a very clear memory of Mr. Brodie sitting on the edge of his desk telling us all about the ichneumon fly, the previous afternoon.

Now it wasn't clairvoyance, because Mr. Brodie never did do that in the end. He just validated that what I'd said was correct, and went on. The rest of the class learned about the ichneumon fly from ME.

Did I slide from one universe to another that evening, one in which the only difference was that in the new universe he hadn't got quite as far on with his lesson plan? Look, this is nuts.

The only rational explanation I've ever been given is that I dreamed the entire incident. All I can say is that I don't think I did. I don't often remember dreams at all, and I can only remember a very few (particularly frightening) dreams from longer ago than a few weeks. And I know very well they were dreams. That classroom incident was like no dream I ever had.

Much, much later, after discussing this with the friend who suggested the dream explanation, it occurred to me that the only source of information I had ever had for the truth about the ichneumon fly as a biological organism was my (apparently false) memory of Mr. Brodie telling us about it, and my subsequent retelling of that. So I looked it up in a book (a book I did not possess at the time of this incident - it was one I acquired at university). There it was. I'd even got the spelling right. In the book, the parasitised organism was said to be a beetle larva in a tree, not a cabbage white butterfly, but the details of the parasitism were pretty much correct.

OK. I dreamed it all. But I didn't.

Rolfe.

[tamiO]

Good story :) I don't know what to make of it, either.

[Ed]

That fly is well known and figures often in nature films. It also provided the underlieing concept for the film "Alien" as you may remember. The point is that you could have come across a discussion of it in a variety of places, not just text books. Attributing the information to an authority figure would not overly surprise me.

Strange, though

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Ed
That fly is well known and figures often in nature films. It also provided the underlieing concept for the film "Alien" as you may remember. The point is that you could have come across a discussion of it in a variety of places, not just text books. Attributing the information to an authority figure would not overly surprise me.

Strange, though

This happened in 1970. When did they film "Alien"? Oh, and we didn't have a television in the house until 1972. And I didn't go much to the cinema.

The weirdness is remembering him telling us. The very next day. It seemed so ordinary, just a usual checkup that we'd remembered something, until the universal declarations that he hadn't.

Rolfe.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rolfe


This happened in 1970. When did they film "Alien"? Oh, and we didn't have a television in the house until 1972. And I didn't go much to the cinema.

The weirdness is remembering him telling us. The very next day. It seemed so ordinary, just a usual checkup that we'd remembered something, until the universal declarations that he hadn't.

Rolfe.

At the risk of losing all credibility, let me say that odd stuff does happen, it certainly has to me. Nothing, perhaps as jarring as your example. I remember once I was in a house and my mind kept repeating "get out". Never happened before or since. Not very well formed but subjectively real nontheless. Was there no, is there not now a field of study called "phenominology", sorta investigation into one off events?

[Thanz]

Originally posted by Rolfe

Now it wasn't clairvoyance, because Mr. Brodie never did do that in the end. He just validated that what I'd said was correct, and went on. The rest of the class learned about the ichneumon fly from ME.
I agree that the dream explanation may be hard to swallow (not that I have a better one). When I have a dream, and I am reading something in the dream or hearing some song or whatever that I don't actually know, and I try to focus on it in the dream, I find out that I can't and then I know that I am dreaming.

If we are allowing "woo-woo" speculation here, I would not rule out clairvoyance just yet. It would depend on your view of the universe and determinism. It could be that you saw the future as it would have rolled out prior to you seeing it - that is, what would have happened is that your teacher would have asked about predators, no one puts up their hand, and he then explains about the fly. You "saw" this explanation. When you regurgitated it the next day, you altered the time line slightly so that the explanation you "saw" never occurs, as it is not needed. Or something like that. ;)

[Starrman]

One day we had Biology last period in the afternoon, and we were learning about the cabbage white butterfly. Near the end of the lesson Mr. Brodie told us about something called the ichneumon fly, which lays its eggs in the butterfly's chrysalis so it hatches ichneumon flies and not butterflies.

This quote is to illustrate just how important the fact that it was a butterfly that was affected. Then;

Next morning (not first thing, but before lunch) we had Biology again. Mr. Brodie started the lesson by asking, "Can anyone tell me about natural predators of the cabbage white?"

He then confirms you are right about the predator of a cabbage white butterfly. Then, at the end of your post;

I'd even got the spelling right. In the book, the parasitised organism was said to be a beetle larva in a tree, not a cabbage white butterfly, but the details of the parasitism were pretty much correct.

This strikes me, and I think it is the key point to the story. If I read this right, your description from your memory was pretty much correct, except the fact that it was a beetle rather than a very specific (cabbage white) butterfly. This is huge. If your rememberence of the story is true, wouldn't the biology teacher have corrected this mistake, rather than confirm it?

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Starrman
This strikes me, and I think it is the key point to the story. If I read this right, your description from your memory was pretty much correct, except the fact that it was a beetle rather than a very specific (cabbage white) butterfly. This is huge. If your rememberence of the story is true, wouldn't the biology teacher have corrected this mistake, rather than confirm it?

No, hang on a minute. We were STUDYING the cabbage white butterfly, which according to him is a bit of a pest if you grow vegetables in your garden. The ichneumon fly came into it because, as my recollection of the biology class goes, it was a natural curb on the numbers of the cabbage white. His actual question was, "Can anyone tell me about natural means of control of the cabbage white butterfly?" I then volunteered the ichneumon fly story, believing I was repeating his earlier lesson, and he acceded to that. As I remember.

It was only much much later that someone suggested I might have dreamed the lot. In which case, was there actually any such thing as the ichneumon fly? It occurred to me I'd never looked up anything to check if there even was such a thing - as I said, according to everyone present except me, the only time that material had been presented was when I told the story (thinking I was repeating what the teacher had said). And I remember no other occasion when the creature impinged on my consciousness apart from that allegedly "false" recollection.

At that point I looked up a book (which I have in front of me now, marked as bought in September 1971 when I went up to university - this all occurred in 1970 while I still at school) to see if it mentioned anything about the creature. The book spoke about it parasitising beetles, but by exactly the same technique as I "remembered" being told it parasitised the butterflies. This I took as evidence that the entire creature, name and modus operandi, wasn't some figment of my imagination!

I'm assuming the damn thing does the mojo on the butterflies as well as the beetles. The book doesn't go into much detail. If it hadn't been related to the butterfly, there was no relevance to the lesson, which was about the butterfly, not the ichneumon.

I just mentioned the beetle bit, as well as the date of purchase of the book, to demonstrate that I didn't get the whole story from the book. Actually, although it was a set book, I don't remember reading that part at all until the day I used it to check up on the facts of the "weird story".

Rolfe.

[dingler44]

Originally posted by Rolfe
(This was a very high-level selective school, and the top stream of Biology pupils - SOMEBODY else had to have been awake.


This is the segment of your story I find most interesting. To me as an outside reader, I don't find it strange that a top biology student at a very high-level selective school knew details of a particular fly.

The question is where did that information come from? Had you read, heard of or studied the fly before and simply forgotten the original source? Did you unintentionally replace your forgotten source with the teacher's previous lesson? We all know that the mind is both creative and fallable.

[voidx]

The validating part of this story appears to be the ichneumon fly. You would have to be absolutely certain you'd never heard it mentioned before the lesson about the Cabbage white. Where did the teacher "actually" leave of the lesson the previous day? You were already discussing the Cabbage White, so if he left the previous days class with the thought of predators and other such things, then if you'd had some inkling of the ichneumon fly previously you could have just related it to the Cabbage White, and as it turned out were correct. This is an important question to me, since you seemingly remembered this whole class portion and discussion the previous day, and it turned out to not have happened, do you know what he was actually talking about that day? Did someone fill you in? Do you have any recollection? I think its important to know what he actually talked about the day before, because it may have lead you in this direction.

[voidx]

I agree with Dingler44 as well. I'm very hesitant to invoke the clairvoyance explanation. I do not discount it, but I find using it at this point is lazy, it poses no detail on what actually happened, and its not verfiable. Where as problems with memory lapse or dreaming, day-dreaming could still adequately explain this.

[Starrman]

Looking up this very fly on the net, it seems the fly will inject its eggs into any insect or caterpillar. I can't seem to find any mention of it injecting its eggs into a chysalis.

The qoute from the original story again is:

Near the end of the lesson Mr. Brodie told us about something called the ichneumon fly, which lays its eggs in the butterfly's chrysalis so it hatches ichneumon flies and not butterflies

So what Mr. Brodie told you in this memory (or dream, or whatever) was not correct. It seems odd to me that you remember things as specific 'ichneumon fly' and 'white cabbage butterfly' (even will enough to spell 'ichneumon' correctly), yet get the part about where it lays it's eggs wrong.

[voidx]

This will probably make my point clearer. Here is your recollection of events:

1) Day 1 - Brodie talks about Cabbage Whites and the ichneumon fly, you listen.

2) Day 2 - Brodie asks about natural controls for the Cabbage Whites, you thinking he's seeing what you remember from Day 1 answer about the ichneumon fly, no one knows what you're talking about.

Everyone else's recollection:

1) Day 1 - Brodie talks about something, probably relating to the Cabbage White as that was your subject of discussion at the time, but you have no recollection as you imagined the above Day 1.

2) Day 2 - Brodie throws out a question, I'm assuming relating to the previous days "actual" discussion, you answer it and no one knows how you knew the answer yet, not even Brodie.

So my question again is, what happened on Day 1 in everyone elses recollection?

[Darat]

33 years ago and you trust your memory on the details of something that happened when you were a teenager?

No disrespect but how can you be certain your memory is actually 100% accurate of what and when the events happened and how do you know you just haven’t forgotten something that could explain it quite mundanely?

With all these types of anecdotes I tend to (because of my own experience with memory of long ago events) consider the possibility that the recollection of the event may not be 100% accurate or may leave out what would be information that could explain it because its been forgotten over the years.

Again, if my experience can be generalised, we tend to remember the “special” events. Just as a “for instance” there could have been a TV programme on the night before that you half listened to that had the information in it but you just don’t remember that.

It is rather similar in some ways to a post made by a few weeks ago by Explorer, Telepathy? (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26022) .

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Starrman
Looking up this very fly on the net, it seems the fly will inject its eggs into any insect or caterpillar. I can't seem to find any mention of it injecting its eggs into a chysalis.

So what Mr. Brodie told you in this memory (or dream, or whatever) was not correct. It seems odd to me that you remember things as specific 'ichneumon fly' and 'white cabbage butterfly' (even will enough to spell 'ichneumon' correctly), yet get the part about where it lays it's eggs wrong.

He might have said caterpillar. It was a long time ago. Cabbage white butterfly, juvenile version, ichneumon fly lays eggs in this, which does no good to the butterfly and so saves at least some of your cabbages. That's all I really remember of the detail.

To go on to Voidx's point, I everyone else knew that the topic we were on was the cabbage white butterfly. No dispute. This was confirmed by Mr. Brodie's actual question, which pre-supposed that we were still on that topic. The only apparent disagreement was whether or not he'd mentioned the ichneumon fly the previous day.

I tried to ask other people about it afterwards, because I thought maybe they just didn't remember, and somebody would perhaps rremember with a bit of prodding, or maybe there was some silly conspiracy to wind me up, but nobody wanted to talk about it. I got the impression that they thought I was playing some sort of silly atttention-seeking game.

Can't have been a TV programme, we didn't have a TV at the time (sad, but true). And again, if I'd got it from the radio or a book, my usual attitude would have been to answer, and then take some pride in knowing. But I was repeating the previous day's memory of the teacher telling it to the class until the "thump" moment when I realised it hadn't just been a "check to see who was awake last lesson" question. It's the bewilderment of that realisation that has kept the memory so fresh.

For many years the only explanation put to me was that I somehow knew about the ichneumon fly from another source, and had imagined Mr. Brodie telling us about it. I just couldn't see how that could have been so - if I'd known some other way, I'd just have stuck my hand up and shown what a smart-aleck I was. What actually happened was that I believed I was remembering Mr. Brodie telling us about it only the previous day - it was a recent, and at that time reasonably detailed memory (even if now I can't tell you whether he said chrysalis or caterpillar).

It was only relatively recently that someone suggested that perhaps I'd dreamed DAY 2. Mr. Brodie really did tell us all about the creature, and somehow I had a dream that he'd asked the class, and nobody but me remembered. I can't refute that, only that until the suggestion was made it hadn't even occurred to me, and the memory doesn't feel like a dream, and although it has faded with the passing of time, it hasn't gone completely the way dreams do. It was too rational. I was dressed, for a start! And my dreams usually feature prominently me being unprepared, or late, or without some vital piece of kit - not knowing something I'm not supposed to know.

It was only then I thought to check whether there was any such beastie, and found sufficient confirmation to indicate that the thing wasn't entirely hallucinated. But that doesn't completely refute the dream theory at all.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Darat
33 years ago and you trust your memory on the details of something that happened when you were a teenager?

No disrespect but how can you be certain your memory is actually 100% accurate of what and when the events happened and how do you know you just haven’t forgotten something that could explain it quite mundanely?

You're quite right of course. It's just that it was SO odd, and was never explained, and as such it's something I've come back to now and again all my life.

I've never forgotten it, and I've never changed my story.

The thing is, I can say, "I know what happened, it happened to me," but as soon as anyone I tell passes on the story it becomes "A friend of mine says..." and thus completely non-substantiated.

I just thought I'd see if anyone had any other ideas. The dream one is the best, it's just so odd that until a friend (a real live friend but on an email list at the time) suggested that explanation, it hadn't even occurred to me. Because the whole experience had no "dream" quality to it.

Rolfe.

[voidx]

Having a vivid realistic dream isn't impossible, so that to me is the most mundane aspect, that part could have happened, whether a night dream or a day dream. To me it would appear that the answer lies within the "lost" day. Whether it was Day 1, or as suggested to you Day 2. You have a day where you remember you "memory" but do not remember what actually happened, I would guarantee you that your answer lies in the "lost" activities of that previous day. Something prompted you to start thinking about predators or natural controls for the Cabbage White, you got the memory, through dream or imagination, or something, and you attached the ichneumon fly, which perhaps you had heard about, but did not remember. This seems likely to me, albeit quite an odd experience admittedly.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by voidx
Having a vivid realistic dream isn't impossible, so that to me is the most mundane aspect, that part could have happened, whether a night dream or a day dream. To me it would appear that the answer lies within the "lost" day. Whether it was Day 1, or as suggested to you Day 2. You have a day where you remember you "memory" but do not remember what actually happened, I would guarantee you that your answer lies in the "lost" activities of that previous day. Something prompted you to start thinking about predators or natural controls for the Cabbage White, you got the memory, through dream or imagination, or something, and you attached the ichneumon fly, which perhaps you had heard about, but did not remember. This seems likely to me, albeit quite an odd experience admittedly.

Dunno. I have to believe it was something like that, or else complete woo-woo.

I feel a bit like Madeleine Ennis, but with a difference. She's the professor who claims to have replicated the Benveniste experiment in her lab, but just sits there saying she has no explanation for the facts she states. It was actually her experiment the famous Horizon programme tried to replicate for the Randi challenge, not Benveniste's. Of course, the attempt failed comprehensively. She just sits there saying "I have no explanation."

Well, hell woman, you're a scientist. Don't you want to know? Why don't you invite Randi's team into your lab to see if he can spot the problem like he did in Benveniste's? Or at least try to troubleshoot it yourself? Or if you're so all-fired sure, apply yourself for the million bucks?

I'm a scientist, and that's why the ichneumon fly story bugs me (pun not really intended!). But it was a singular event, nothing like it has ever happened to me before or since, and there's no way I can test it.

The more time passes from the event, the more inclined I become to say it must have been some effect just as Voidx suggests.

Rolfe.

[patnray]

I'd guess you had heard of the fly form some other source. It is not uncommon, and back in the late 60's there was a great boom of interest in using "natural" pest controls. Stores were selling lady bugs and bacillus thurigensis (sp?) for controlling aphids and caterpillars. I had heard of the ichneumon fly from several sources (but back then I had an avid interest in insects and used to collect caterpillars and feed them to see what they turned into. One of them hatched a batch of these flies...)

Even though the exposure you had to the concept was not conciously remembered, the class discussion of the white butterfly triggered that memory during a daydream or a sleeping dream which seemed real enough (as dreams sometimes do) so that your memory of the class got mixed up with the memory of the dream...

Memory is a funny thing. In the early 60's I had a horrendous argument with my brother, an argument we both remember to this day. Except we both have completely different ideas about what the argument was about...

[SRW]

It's an interesting story and there are some interesting possibilities mentioned above. I cannot help but wonder if you have had more experiences like this?

[dingler44]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Dunno. I have to believe it was something like that, or else complete woo-woo.


To add to my previous post. I think it's obvious that the original experience surprised the heck out of you. (as even now it has a strong impression in your memory) But I get the idea you went decades without examining the facts of the incident. It is also possible that at the time you had this strange experience - you were more open to the idea of ESP or telepathy. Maybe you'd even read an article about it around that time... maybe Uri Geller was plastered all over the news. If your initial reaction was that the event was paranormal, it is likely that after much time had passed without questioning the event, even if you found yourself to become skeptical and critical of the unexplained - your first reaction came from a younger, perhaps more impressionable mind. *all speculation of course - just ideas to chew on*

You also have said things like it didn't have a dreamlike quality. Not only is that subjective territory but it's a subjective examination of memories that went decades unchecked. The shock and excitement of the experience and the passing of time could all easily lead to changes in the story. There's just no way to know for sure anymore.

Maybe you knew the information already(albeit not with 100% accuracy) and forgot the source.

Maybe you dreamed the 2nd day incident in the classroom.(although if this was the case, we still haven't accounted for how you knew the fly info)

Maybe it's something else.

[Lord Kenneth]

As a student, I am not particularly suprised at this incident.

One part really stands out:

Near the end of the lesson Mr. Brodie told us about something called the ichneumon fly, which lays its eggs in the butterfly's chrysalis so it hatches ichneumon flies and not butterflies. Then the bell rang, and as schoolkids do, we stampeded for the door.

It's possible that you weren't the only one who remembered it, but they didn't speak up.

Then the bell rang? Obviously, it was near the end of the lesson, and kids were preparing to get out of class. You mention that they stampeded for the door. That means they already had their notebooks, books, etc already in their backpacks and were ready to go. So it doesn't suprise me it wasn't in anyone's notes, nor that they didn't remember it because class was just about to end.

Also, near the ends of lessons kids usually start talking, standing up, fidgeting around. Was that the case then? If so, there may have been distractions and wouldn't be suprised if the teacher forgot himself.

[thaiboxerken]

Your memory of the event is most-likely flawed.

I discount clairvoyance because people don't have superpowers.

[Lord Kenneth]

I think his memory is (for the most part) fine.

What he describes is not as unlikely as it seems once you examine it closely.

[Eos of the Eons]

I've had this happen before in this way....the teacher is going on about the butterflies and how much of a nuisance they are...you're bored and looking ahead in the class books/materials. It was the end of the class..did the teacher suggest wondering how cabbages manage to grow still in spite of the butterflies? You briefly skimmed over the fly thing (which you say is in the book you still have from 1970) and put two and two together unconsciously. Then you sleep on it (sleep reinforces memory, and your dreams can mix things together from the day-and you don't remember the dreams).

You get to class and the teacher's question triggers your memory and his discussion the day before and you remember it as him saying more than he did.

I've had stuff like that happen a lot. Especially near the end of class when I'm trying to get notes organized and anticipate homework.

I always ask questions of the information without the teacher having to as well. The teacher is saying this....how is it that they don't kill all the cabbages around?

It's happened to me like that, knowing without the teacher having to tell me to look it up. I got curious and looked into briefly without trying to remember, just to satisfy my curiosity. Then the teachers asks us for ideas, and I've already tried to formulate those ideas and the answers already.

They teach us how to think in school and be curious about cause and effect. You may have done something similar to that. Mixed something in to what he was discussing even though it was you looking it up or taking notes...

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by tamiO
Good story :) I don't know what to make of it, either.
I cant help but agree...

[Blondin]

Or...

Mr Brodie was f***in' with your mind!

[Ceinwyn]

Just out of curiosity, did you have a subscription or access to National Geographic magazine?

I tend to get a lot of stuff from there, and then never remember that I did.

[Rolfe]

Hmm, I just read the night's batch of suggestions.

There was no book. If the information had been in a book we had available, nobody would have been surprised that I knew it. The book I mentioned was one I acquired more than a year after the incident, which I just looked up to check that the facts weren't all illusion.

At that age, the likeliest other source for the information would have been a weekly magazine I got called "Look and Learn". But the weird bit is that I had no thought at all of "oh, I know this, I saw it in Look and Learn." All the time I was spouting the information I was visualising the teacher telling us the previous lesson, convinced I was just repeating what he had said to us less than 24 hours previously.

Yes, the whole thing surprised the heck out of me. Uri Geller was plastered all over the news at some stage, but I've a feeling that was a couple of years later, and anyway, my only wonder on that one was "what's the trick he's using?" Never even contemplated otherwise. (Never really thought it was as simple as bending by force while operating misdirection either, but there you go!)

I've thought about it quite often, it's just something which has always been in the back of my mind as "unexplained". I've told the story quite often over the years, now and again, not obsessively or anything, but just as an odd anecdote. I never forgot it and never changed the story.

Yes, my first explanation was that Mr. Brodie really had told us the previous day, and I was the only one of the 30 or so people present who remembered, including him. But like I said, there were a lot of pathological swots in that class. They'd jump at the bell, but they'd listen right up till that moment. ALL of them? It just seemed so unlikely.

For many years I toyed only with possible explanations of how I might have imagined the day 1 events, possibly putting together the information from subconscious previous knowledge. But I couldn't get over the fact that my memory was entirely of Mr. Brodie telling the class the information. I'm the sort of person who remembers information by where it was encountered - I can usually tell where on a page I read a certain fact, and flip the book just looking at that PART of the pages till I find it. This one, no memory of books or pages or diagrams, just the teacher talking.

Only a couple of years ago, when I told the story to another group of friends, did someone suggest that day 2 might have been a dream. When I thought about it, that was impossible to refute. Mr. Brodie really did tell the class about the fly just as I remembered, but I dreamed the whole incident of being asked the question and being the only one who could answer.

This is certainly theoretically possible. It just seems odd that it never even occurred to me as a possibility until someone else suggested it, and it was completely unlike any dream I've ever had. Including the fact that I don't remember my dreams in detail, except that they don't make internal sense, and they often involve me being unprepared or late or in a terrible rush.

Never had another similar experience. It's not that uncommon to remember things differently from other people, but it is uncommon to have such a puzzle - if it was simply differing memories, I was the only one who remembered correctly out of about 30 people present, including the person who had been doing the talking.

But it's either that or day 2 was completely dreamed or imagined. I suppose.

Rolfe.

[Lord Kenneth]

I would simply say that, being the end of class, they forgot.

Again, were people talking, moving around, etc?


I think that you really were the only one who remembered.

[Underemployed]

I agree with Blondin. It was an elaborate trick played on you by your fellow classmates and the teacher. Even now they will deny it, but don't believe them!

Look, there they are now, behind you, sniggering!

Looking back on my school teachers, it is certainly not unreasonable to think that they would forget things they taught only yesterday. It is unlikely that everybody BUT you forgot, but that event is far more likely than you witnessing an event from a parallel timeline.

[Ceinwyn]

Oh that's an interesting possibility, that you dreamed day 2. It's funny, I sometimes do that, recollect something and then realize a minute later, "no that didn't really happen, that was a dream". After all, your experience was quite a while ago, and things could've gotten jumbled up a bit so that you can't really remember which day was was real and which wasn't. Or hey...maybe you dreamed both days! ;)

[Eos of the Eons]

Yeah, how the heck are we supposed to know? We don't even know if the story is true and what the situation was exactly. We only have your perspective. Not much anyone can say for sure. My dreams are so real now that when I wake up I have to separate reality from dreams a lot of mornings. Happened this morning. I did something at work to prevent a bad scenario, and then in my dream the scenario happened and I was freaking out.

Not fun :p

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Eos of the Eons
Yeah, how the heck are we supposed to know? We don't even know if the story is true and what the situation was exactly. We only have your perspective. Not much anyone can say for sure.

Very true. That's the problem. If I heard the story from anyone else, I'd be convinced that at best either day 2 was a dream, or that day 2 did happen, but for some weird reason, all but one person in the room really did forget what happened on day 1.

My problem is that while I accept this intellectually, emotionally I don't "believe" this is what happened. Even though it must have been.

Rolfe.

[BPSCG]

This was all explained in the film "Field of Dreams".

Annie (Amy Madigan): "Maybe you're having a 60's acid flashback."
Ray (Kevin Costner): "I never did acid."
Annie: "Well, maybe you will someday and it's an acid flashforward."

What would we do without Hollywood?

You're welcome. :D

[Rolfe]

:crazy:

[Skeptical Greg]

.... There it was. I'd even got the spelling right.


How did the spelling come into play, in an oral response to your teacher..?..:confused:




...........(This was a very high-level selective school, and the top stream of Biology pupils - ..........


Assuming that you were not misplaced, as a member of this class, it would not seem unreasonable to imagine that you had gleaned this information from some source at some time..
Much more reasonable than some psi explanation..

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Diogenes

How did the spelling come into play, in an oral response to your teacher..?..:confused:
I heard the word, and assumed a spelling. I can't remember if the teacher wrote it on the blackboard or not. Later, on looking up the subject, I found that the spelling I'd assumed was correct. For what it's worth.

I do not think I heard about this elsewhere and transferred the information. The anomalous event is my memory of the teacher saying something which everyone else present (including him) later denied he'd said. The fact that the information was apparently close enough to correct just indicates to me that the whole thing wasn't a total hallucination.

I think either it all really happened and I was the only one who remembered the events, or I dreamed the second incident based on the reality of the first incident. Intellectually, it has to be one of these two. It's only that, emotionally, I can't square it with the quality of the memory.

Rolfe.

[Eos of the Eons]

Ah, so you took no notes during the lecture on the mystery bug thing. Doesn't that mean anything? I always took down notes on such important/intriguing material. Population control would be on the test.

[Lord Kenneth]

Again, as a student myself I cannot stress the significance of this being mentioned at the end of class. I think you're the only one who remembered.

[Walter Wayne]

None of the students volunteered it? That just means the few who may have been paying attention didn't feel at that moment like speaking up. You may have noticed a few with question marks on their faces, but their were probably some who simply look at their desk or straight forward and tried not to roll their eyes at the forgetfulness of the teacher.

Walt

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Walter Wayne
None of the students volunteered it? That just means the few who may have been paying attention didn't feel at that moment like speaking up. You may have noticed a few with question marks on their faces, but their were probably some who simply look at their desk or straight forward and tried not to roll their eyes at the forgetfulness of the teacher.

Doesn't fly. I appealed to the class as a whole to find someone to back me up, and the teacher did likewise. There was comprehensive support for the teacher's position. And this wasn't a group who would have agreed black was white just because the teacher said so. They could all have forgotten, but I think it was a genuine response.

No, I didn't take notes. I'm a rotten note-taker. I prefer (even at university) to try to remember the lecture as it's being given.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I'm just bumping this thread for Olaf. I'm sure s/he'll enjoy it.

Rolfe.

[bug_girl]

thanks for bumping this Rolfe, because now i can correct one very large mistake. There is NO ichneumon "fly". there is, however, a large family of Ichneumonidae, parasitic *wasps.*
This group includes many caterpillar parasites, including one of the cabbage butterfly.

There is a parasitic fly group (tachinids), but these are large and are not at all "wasp-y" in appearance.

link to the Canada parasitic wasp page (http://res2.agr.ca/parc-crapac/pubs/bene/bewasps_e.htm)

[/pedantic entomological ranting]

[qII]

Rolfey,
i think you are making the whole thing up. these things could never in a million trillion years happen. You are woowoo.

[Interesting Ian]

Interesting story Rolfe! I never saw it originally.


Dingler remarked:

The question is where did that information come from? Had you read, heard of or studied the fly before and simply forgotten the original source? Did you unintentionally replace your forgotten source with the teacher's previous lesson? We all know that the mind is both creative and fallible.


I feel disposed to feel that this scenario is most likely to be correct. I was thinking this after I read your opening post.

But, unlike the skeptics, I am not at all 100% confident that this explanation is the correct one. I just feel that, taking everything into consideration, the explanation is going to lie along these lines.

Another explanation is that, because it was near the end of the lesson, the rest of the class simply weren't paying attention.

Most of the other explanations are fairly weird (apart from the hypothesis you're just winding us up!). But the weirdness in itself shouldn't compel us to reject these hypotheses. This is where I differ from skeptics.

But on the whole I feel disposed to go for dingler's explanation. Of course it's really quite impossible for any of us to say. Now if this phenomena were quite frequent, that would be somewhat more interesting. Maybe it is, I really don't know. Do you?

But anyway, even if it were relatively common we could appeal to the extraordinary capacity of the mind to mix up and even fabricate memories etc. On the other hand this hypothesis is unfalsifiable i.e it can always be appealed to.

It's difficult to know what to believe in anecdotes of apparently anomalous occurrences. My general rule of thumb would be that if it is a one off event, or the anomalous phenomenon in question tend to be limited in time or space, or be unmistakably culturally specific, then we should be more disposed to accept any possible "normal" explanations then if the alleged phenomenon reported were universal.

[MRC_Hans]

So according to Bug Girl, and yourself, the facts were not correct? The teacher did not tell about this, because it is not so. So somehow, you dreamed or daydreamed up this information, probably from things you had heard elsewhere (I'll bet you were an inquisitive kid ;)), a memory slip making you think the teacher told it.

When you related the story the next day, the teacher did not know enough to tell you that you had the facts wrong, so he just let it hang.

Not too mysterious, methinks.

Hans

[epepke]

Originally posted by Rolfe
If someone else told me this, I wouldn't believe it. It's only because it happened to me that I'm still puzzling at it.

Beats the hell out of me. I regularly have experiences where I'm watching television and see the same thing after the commercial break. This usually happens when I'm drinking Fuller's ESB or Abbot Ale. But I've never actually recorded it in such a way that it would stand up to scrutiny later. Either I'm a precog, or it's some trick of memory.

[Tanja]

This is quite an interesting thread!Thanks for bumping it.

I agree with those who suggested you were the only student in class paying attention - it is not impossible at all.

It reminded me of a funny incident that happened in my biology class, some 11 years ago. Our teacher was telling us about some flower, insect, fungus, whatever, and telling us about various species within the group. We were all writing it down (about 15 students in class). At some point she realised that noone was actually listening, we were mechanically writing things down. So she started making things up to see if anyone would notice.

She was saying ridiculous things like: (lets say she was talking about fungi) "in this group we have the blue angel fungus, the purple dotted fungus, the chocolate velvet fungus, the sweet dream fungus". We just kept writing it down, noone realising it was a bit weird. After a couple of minutes, she started laughing and we all looked up, puzzled. She explained she saw we were all writing without listening, and to check how robotised we were she started saying nonsense. We looked into our notepads and realised we really jotted all those things down without realising so.

On the other hand, it happened quite a few times that teachers forgot the exact point in curriculum from which they should resume the lecture, and either skipped a part or started again on a subject they already did the day before. If you teach five or six classes who are in the same year, so you need to repeat the same lecture five or six times and each class probably has a slightly different speed, it is easy to forget where you stopped last time.

On the possibility that you read the information before - do you have an older sibling whose science books you were occasionally reading or looking at? My sister was two years ahead of me in school. The nerd that I am, I often read her school books, and probably managed to retain some information.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by bug_girl
thanks for bumping this Rolfe, because now i can correct one very large mistake. There is NO ichneumon "fly". there is, however, a large family of Ichneumonidae, parasitic *wasps.*
This group includes many caterpillar parasites, including one of the cabbage butterfly.Mmm, I wonder if there has been a change in nomenclature? Because the book I looked it up in (Animals Without Backbones, by Ralph Buchsbaum, which I note was first published in 1938 and revised in 1948 - though it was a set book for my university course in 1971) definitely calls it the "ichneumon fly".

I don't have any elder siblings, and the thing about the story is that I remember the teacher telling us about it. Not of reading it in a book (I didn't own the Buchsbaum book at the time this happened), not of seeing it on TV (which we didn't have at the time anyway), not of being told by anyone else, but of hearing Mr. Brodie standing in class the previous afternoon telling us about it.

It's possible I was the only one in class paying attention. But that would have to include the teacher, who swore that he hadn't got that far in the lesson the previous day. (But you know what? I still entertain that explanation.)

It's possible the entire class plus the teacher were involved in some weird plot to wind me up. Assuming that I would answer the question, and then nobody ever in the months following admitting it was a wind-up - I don't think so!

It's possible I dreamed the second day's episode. It's just that the memory doesn't have the quality of a dream. Like I said, I was wearing clothes, and I knew the answer - I was prepared for class. Neither of these sounds like the sort of dreams I have!

It's possible I'm lying to you all and made the entire story up.

And then there are woo-woo explanations. Which I suppose needn't be woo-woo as in supernatural, just rather creative interpretations of the space-time continuum!

I honestly don't know. And since it was a one-off, unrepeatable, untestable, I don't think there's any way to settle it. It's just something that has mildly intrigued me over the years. And I thought Olaf would enjoy the story.

Rolfe.

[Kopji]

Nice story.

Not sure there's any way forward on these kinds of things without getting outside of the 'memory' of it and actually interview the teacher or some of the students.

[MRC_Hans]

Im' sorry, but "creative interpretations of the space-time continuum" IS woowoo (or science fiction). There is no such thing in the real world.

I'm still puzzled about the mixed infirmation here: Is there or is there not an ichneumon fly that does what you said it did? I find it rather important to the story whether the information was correct or not.

OTOH, at thirteen, an inquisitive kid has a LOT of factual information stashed away in her brain, and, well even if you do not remember it now, you could have read about the ich... whatever, somewhere, sometimes.

Hans

[Soapy Sam]

Rolfe- I have no Biology training at all, but I've known about Ichneumon flies (as they were called when I first heard of them), since about the same time as you - around 1970. I do not recall where I first encountered them , but I do recall knowing about them when in high school ( Some years later I read about Sphex wasps , which have similarly nasty habits, but I definitely knew of Ichneumons as flys, not wasps. Bug Girl's comment is my first encounter with that term.)

We both grew up in Scotland , so I can't help wondering if we may have learned of Ichneumons from the same source. (For instance, Cabbage whites are common garden butterflies in Scotland I believe and may have featured on programmes like "Gardeners' Question Time" on the radio.) (Nb. I STILL don't have a telly!)

I'm surprised you did not consider earlier that Day 2 might be a wrong memory, as it had occurred to me before I was done reading your first post. It should be checkable, even after all this time.
Among several recent coincidences, I met an ex schoolmate who could recall my birthday and home address, after a quarter century, so memorable lessons ought to be clear in some classmates' minds.

I also just met the original Dr. I.Rolfe, (no relation as we established) , for the first time in twenty years.

My money is on you hearing this information on the radio. This would make it easy to wrongly recall being taught it in school.
I find it rather long odds that both of us would know about this at similar times, without being able to recall where we learned it.

[Lorri]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Rolfe
[B]If someone else told me this, I wouldn't believe it. It's only because it happened to me that I'm still puzzling at it.

Hi Rolfe. I believe we come to earth in a physical body to learn lessons and gain wisdom. We existed before we came here - we were what some people call spirit. In the spirit world we do not need a body because that world is a world of thought. Our mind power in our natural state is awesome. It is that power that can lift objects, interfere with electrics etc.,

When we come here the mind is locked, and what has gone before and what we come here to learn is not known to us. The mind that is available to us is like a blank book and as we go along lots of info is keyed in.

The mind that is availlabe to us is split in to three sections. The first section would be the future sub conscious, the second section would be the now and the third section would be the past sub conscious.

We are allowed help from the spirit world, to help us achieve what we came here for. We are also given things to 'wake us up', get us wondering why things happen etc., I believe that in your sleep state you were given the information about the teacher and the butterfly and it sat in your future sub conscious. It was waiting for your teacher to trigger it off and it was brought in to the present or now part of the mind and then moved across to the past sub conscious.

I will now sit back and wait for the avalanche of protest and possible name calling but I do like a good debate!!

[MRC_Hans]

Welcome Lorri. You sure posted the basics for a good debate, but I suggest we do not hijack Rolfe's thread for it. How about starting a new one about your theory?

Hans

[bug_girl]

the only way i can see these wasps being called "flies" is the way that a "butterfly" is not, well, a fly at all. It's a very large physical difference.

Flies "proper" have a greatly reduced second pair of wings. Butterflies clearly have four large wings. A tip that the name is more popular than accurate is the spacing. It's written "butterfly." The actual parasitic fly i mentioned is a Tachinid fly. (two words).

Sorry guys, i think your memories are in error. Linnaeus recognized these as separate groups. I'm pretty sure your memories don't go back that far.:p

[Soapy Sam]

Well, if you added them together...


The oddity is that we remember the same error- ie we probably heard it from the same source. ( The use of the generic term "fly" for a flying insect might suggest either a non specialist source, or a non specialist target audience).

ps No contest BG, if you say they are wasps, I shall so name them, outside this thre
ead.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by bug_girl
the only way i can see these wasps being called "flies" is the way that a "butterfly" is not, well, a fly at all. It's a very large physical difference.Well I'm not an entomologist. All I know is that when I looked in the index of this book I have in front of me, I found "Ichneumon fly, ovipositor of, 320".

On p. 320 what is says is, "In the ichneumon flies the ovipositor is long and sharp; and when, in some way, the ichneumon fly senses the presence of a beetle larva within a tree, the ovipositor is used to drill a hole in the wood and deposit eggs in the body of the larva."

So obviously somebody thinks it's called the ichneumon fly. (Ralph Buchsbaum, for one.)

By the way, Soapy Sam and I have established that although we lived in the same town and may have had contact as primary-age children (and went to the same university), we didn't attend the same secondary school. This happened at secondary school, obviously.

Rolfe.

[Soapy Sam]

I reckon we were just smarter than the average bears. We probably knew all about it at primary school!


Truth is, we both haunted the same public library as kids. We may well have stumbled on the same source material. (Though I usually had my dad's ticket so I could track down new Gollancz SF in the adult section.)

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
(Though I usually had my dad's ticket so I could track down new Gollancz SF in the adult section.) Oh God! I used to scour these same shelves for these same yellow covers!

But the mystery here isn't that I knew about the damn fly (or wasp or whatever). If that had been it, I'd just have stuck my hand up and been a sickening little know-all. It's that when Mr. Brodie asked the question I had a clear memory of him standing right there telling us about it the previous afternoon. I thought he was just checking to see if people had been listening, and using that as a recap of the end of the previous lesson. Until he said "where did you hear all that?"

Even then, my second assumption was that he'd got further than he meant to in his lesson plan the previous day, and forgotten that he'd already told us. Until the entire rest of the class denied all knowledge. Then I was spooked.

And all I ever read in that library was fiction.

Rolfe.

[Virgil]

very simple Rolfe, demonic possesion.


Virgil

[Soapy Sam]

There are several oddities here.
Either
1. Your memory of Day 1 is false.
or
2.Your memory of remembering Day 1 is false.
or
3. Both your teacher and the rest of the class have wrong memory of day 1.
or
Your teacher remembered day 1 wrongly and the rest of the class
simply had not paid attention.

Now I shall brutally wield Occam's Razor.

Rolfe did know about the "I" beast and must have acquired the data from someone.
Rolfe has (clearly) a good memory.
Rolfe has only 1 (so far as we know) such story to tell, a quirk of memory which remains inexplicable after 34 years.
Rolfe's memory (then and now) includes an image of Mr.Brodie giving the lecture.

My conclusion is the simplest one possible. Rolfe is right. Mr.Brodie did explain about the beast. Next day, he asked a quite reasonable question based on his previous lecture.

It is Mr.Brodie's subsequent memory which was wrong and , despite the standard of the class, Rolfe was the only one who had been paying attention. No mystery to solve.*

That said, I would like to talk to the rest of the class about exactly what they recall.

Of course, the whole incident was retroactively created by angels, solely so that I would be enabled to get in touch with another long lost school chum. (Second in five days, both from the same small town).

* And if he did not lecture about it the previous day, then what had he lectured about?

[Vitnir]

The key point here is when the teacher asked "where did you hear that" I think. The students that also remembered the same as you might have been unsecure at that point and didnt speak up. This would explain the incident with regular psycology and group behaviour and doesn't require you to have elaborately dreamt either day 1 or 2. I have held lectures at my University and blank stares are not uncommon if I ask them something during the lecture. This could either mean that I have a really boring lecture or that people get tired around lunch time no matter how smart they are.

You do say that you asked your class mates about this afterwards but I wonder if you remember how well you grilled them and how many of them.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
My conclusion is the simplest one possible. Rolfe is right. Mr.Brodie did explain about the beast. Next day, he asked a quite reasonable question based on his previous lecture.

It is Mr.Brodie's subsequent memory which was wrong and , despite the standard of the class, Rolfe was the only one who had been paying attention. No mystery to solve.*

* And if he did not lecture about it the previous day, then what had he lectured about? I suppose that's the simplest explanation. It's sort of what I thought at the time, it just seemed so unlikely that not only had the teacher forgotten he'd told us that stuff the previous day, the entire rest of the class had too.

It was only a few minutes at the end of the class - the alternative was that he'd gone slightly more slowly through the lesson and hadn't had time for the ichneumon [fly] at the end.

No, I didn't grill the rest of the class hard about it. They didn't want to talk about it, and I backed off because I got the impression they thought I was attention-seeking or just being a general smart-aleck. The one person I'm still in contact with from that class doesn't remember the incident at all (mind you, she doesn't remember quite a lot of simple incidents from our childhood, I suspect all the medicine she learned since sort of crowded it all out).

Maybe there were a few other people at the time who remembered but didn't speak out. I did sort of appeal to the class as a whole to back me up, but it's not certain that everyone would have spoken out even if they did remember.

Anyway, we now know that Soapy Sam and I shared a school playground for about six months when we were about ten. And borrowed the same books out of the same public library. And our mothers still live only about a quarter of a mile apart.

How spooky is that?

Oh, and up yours, Olaf, Soapy and I are good mates.

Rolfe.

[Drooper]

Just a couple of points.

This wasp versus fly thing. I gave it the Google test

Wasp: 1080 hits
Fly: 794 hits

Looking at the links it seems that "fly" is the common name. Even when it is named as the "ichneumon fly", it is described as being a wasp.

About your episode Rolfe. Recently, I walked into a lecture and started rabbiting on, as I do. Then about 30 minutes in, somebody piped up "but Sir, we did this last time". I didn't believe them, as I always bookmark my notes and then make a note where I leave off on a white board by my desk. I argued the case with the whole clase, but they wone the day.

[richardm]

Originally posted by Rolfe
By the way, Soapy Sam and I have established that although we lived in the same town and may have had contact as primary-age children (and went to the same university), we didn't attend the same secondary school. This happened at secondary school, obviously.



Small world, eh?

As a bonus, since we now know that you went to a "very high-level selective school, and the top stream of Biology pupils", it gives an excellent opportunity to be rude about Sam's education :D

Vitnir might have something when he said: The key point here is when the teacher asked "where did you hear that" I think. The students that also remembered the same as you might have been unsecure at that point and didnt speak up.

I can imagine that the teacher perhaps mentioned it in passing as you charged out of the room - "Tomorrow we're going to be doing the ichneumon fly". You had already heard of it from Some Other Source, but had forgotten about that, and simply confabulated the detail of it being explained in the lecture.

When you popped up with the info and the teacher challenged you, it's not hard to imagine the rest of the class ducking down behind the parapet.

But, as has been said before, the memory is a funny thing, and can stitch together all sorts of incidents to make Something Else.

It obviously made a big impression on you at the time, though!

[Soapy Sam]

Richardm-

Sir, only a cad would cast a slur upon a fellow's alma mater!

My high scool was selective too. In fact it was approved by Her Majesty the Queen.
We didn't take biology, but we all got straight "A" s in housebreaking.

[Rolfe]

Lots of my best friends (and the parents of lots of my best friends) went to the same school as Soapy Sam, more than my life's worth to cast the smallest aspersion!

Besides, remember we went to the same university. That levels all scores. :D

(The only rank I can pull is that while my school building is still standing, being used as a primary school, his was flattened and the site now plays host to some pretty tacky "little boxes".)

Rolfe.

[Soapy Sam]

Best day of my life was watching the bulldozers roll right over it.

"Carthago delenda est ", I thought. And ploughed with salt.

[sweetkb713]

Originally posted by Rolfe


Never had another similar experience. It's not that uncommon to remember things differently from other people, but it is uncommon to have such a puzzle - if it was simply differing memories, I was the only one who remembered correctly out of about 30 people present, including the person who had been doing the talking.

But it's either that or day 2 was completely dreamed or imagined. I suppose.

Rolfe.

I think it is more likely that you dreamed one of the incidents with the teacher. I think it is highly unlikely that you would be the only person who remembered.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
Best day of my life was watching the bulldozers roll right over it.

"Carthago delenda est ", I thought. And ploughed with salt. Ploughed with Barrett more like!

And the father of a friend of mine travelled quite a long way for a last look at the place and his name on the dux board and everything. But then he always was sentimental.

It was quite a nice-looking building, not that I was ever inside it. But I gather that they didn't want to keep it and just didn't do any maintenance until it was ready to fall down of its own accord.

The gateposts are still there, giving the little boxes a feeling of superiority over us plebs in the cooncil hooses next door.

Rolfe.

[sweetkb713]

Originally posted by Tanja
At some point she realised that noone was actually listening, we were mechanically writing things down.

Noone is a great friend of mine. He is quite popular amongst some of the teens in my gymnastics club.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by sweetkb713
I think it is more likely that you dreamed one of the incidents with the teacher. I think it is highly unlikely that you would be the only person who remembered. Well, let's just say it's got to be one or the other. It's not as if we can roll back time and go see, or repeat the experiment to see if we get a reproducible result! :D

Rolfe.

[bug_girl]

well, this is most distressing. i had never heard the "fly" applied to this group of wasps until this week! Clearly a bunch of sources are repeating the mistake--many of the citations on google are dictionaries.
well, like most things involving public perceptions of insects, the only thing i can do is a couple quick vodka shots, and let it go.:p

[Soapy Sam]

This has bugged me all day. (sorry).
A brief quote from"Nonmoral Nature" an essay by Stephen J. Gould , published by Penguin Books in the UK in the collection "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes" 1983.

"...The "ichneumon fly", which provoked such concern among natural theologians, was actually a composite creature representing the habits of an enormous tribe. The Ichneumonidae are a group of wasps, not flies,that include more species than all the vertebrates combined..."

Gould goes on, quoting Darwin writing to Asa Gray in 1860 and to Joseph Hooker in 1856 "What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the...horribly cruel works of nature."

Richard Dawkins chose that expression, "Devil's Chaplain" as the title of his latest collection of articles- including a letter to the recently dead Stephen Gould. The general lesson of both writers is that morality is a human property and should not be sought in specious comparisons with nature.

So it seems the term "fly" for the Ichneumonidae is an old one in common and scientific use.

So I should have known better. I bought the book in 1988, and this would be the essay in which I recalled reading about them, long after first learning of their existence around 1970.

[bug_girl]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
This has bugged me all day. (sorry).


now you know why i've taken to drink.
(throws back another one; licks salt off of back of hand.)

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by bug_girl


now you know why i've taken to drink.
(throws back another one; licks salt off of back of hand.) Whaaat?? I always thought it was the other way around: Lick salt off hand, throw back another one. Could that explain the headache I have the morning after?

Hans

[Soapy Sam]

No, but it may explain the sore tongue.

[Garrette]

Whose hand?

[Smike]

Originally posted by Thanz

I agree that the dream explanation may be hard to swallow (not that I have a better one). When I have a dream, and I am reading something in the dream or hearing some song or whatever that I don't actually know, and I try to focus on it in the dream, I find out that I can't and then I know that I am dreaming.

If we are allowing "woo-woo" speculation here, I would not rule out clairvoyance just yet. It would depend on your view of the universe and determinism. It could be that you saw the future as it would have rolled out prior to you seeing it - that is, what would have happened is that your teacher would have asked about predators, no one puts up their hand, and he then explains about the fly. You "saw" this explanation. When you regurgitated it the next day, you altered the time line slightly so that the explanation you "saw" never occurs, as it is not needed. Or something like thahit. ;)

[Cynric]

It's obvious.

A telepathic ichneumon wasp laid some eggs in your ear. As the critters hatched, they implanted false memories about a fictious lesson in order to embarrass you in front of your peers (telepathic ichneumon wasps feed on shame). They also renamed themselves "flies" in order to put you off the trail.
It seems like they got to Buchsbaum too.

There's always a simple explanation.

[Rolfe]

:D

Rolfe.

[Yurei]

hi,

i'm just a lurker (been reading the forums for years), but i really enjoyed this thread and needed to add something. :)

first off, are you still on this and did you resolve this little mistery yet? about day 2: why shouldn't it be possible to find out whether it was a dream or not? it is not too unlikely that someone from class or the teacher would still remember the situation if it really happened. i certainly remember lots of random stuff from my highschool days.
so if you are still in contact with any of your old classmates, have you asked them to confirm the events of day2?

[Zep]

Having missed this the first time around, Rolfe, can I make a possible suggested solution?

1. Being a dedicated swot, you may have just hung around at the end of the first class to ask questions. So Mr Brodie probably only mentioned the fly thingy to you alone, in an informal context.

2. Next day, Mr Brodie simply failed to remember what he told you the day before, as it was so informal. The class were also one step behind. But you, the swot, did, and you heard it from him.

All bases covered? ;)

[MRC_Hans]

Since this has resurfaced, I i'll offer another suggestion, not quite unlike that of Zep.

Being very interested in biology, young Rolfe probably picked up this information somewhere. I know I had quite a few bits of information when I was at school that my teachers hadn't yet taught. In fact, I had some bits that my teachers didn't even know. My field was more physics that biology, of course.

So what I think happened is this:

Teacher announces the subject, but does not cover it. Rolfe, whe already knows about subject, imagines/dreams teacher teaching it. Being a distraught, introvert kid, Rolfe next day fails to realize that teacher actually did not cover the subject.

The distraught introvert thing is my guess, of course, but through what has expired here and there, probably a qualified guess. Having been one myself, I kinda know the signs when I see them ;).

Hans

[Rolfe]

No idea. The only person I'm still in touch with has no memory of the event, but there are lots of events she's forgotten about, must be softening of the brain.

I'm very clear that I remember the teacher covering the subject. Not reading it in a book, seeing it on the television we didn't have at the time, or hearing it from anyone else. The only non-woo explanation that fits the facts as I remember them is that the second day was a dream. It's just very odd that there was no dream-like quality to it, that it was entirely unlike any dream I remember having, and that this explanation didn't even occur to me until someone else suggested it many years later.

Rolfe.

[Hellbound]

Well, since this was resurrected, let me toss out my idea.

When I was in school (especially high school), I was always bored at the rate the teachers covered material. Most often in class, during the lecture, I would read the textbook (only half listening to the lecture). OFten I covered areas the teacher passed over, or read ahead of the current lesson. I remember several times being confused about what had been covered in lecture and what was just material read from the textbook, I think becuase I was trying to pay attention to both at once.

I would suggest that Rolfe probably had a similar habit during school (not to speak for you, but you seem to be the type to do it (like I was)). This might be a possible explanation...you read some of the info during the lecture and misremembered it as being part of the lecture.

Of course, this hinges on the info being in the materials you used in class. From reading your earlier posts, it seems that was not the case. You suggested a magazine you got as a possible source, might you have taken extra reading material to class with you?

The main reason I suggest it is due to the similarity of the experience with mine; I had similar feelings that were caused by reading during the lecture. At the least I've given you another area to consider, I hope :)

[Rolfe]

This might be a possible explanation...you read some of the info during the lecture and misremembered it as being part of the lecture.

Of course, this hinges on the info being in the materials you used in class. From reading your earlier posts, it seems that was not the case. You suggested a magazine you got as a possible source, might you have taken extra reading material to class with you?Nope. I had no written information about it at all. I do not believe I ever read about it in a magazine. For years my only knowledge of the parasite was from the "memory" of the teacher telling us about it, until a few years ago it occurred to me to look it up and see whether in fact there was even such an organism! I found enough basic information in a university-level book I hadn't had in my posession until after I left school to demonstrate that I pretty much had the basics of the thing more or less right.

Rolfe.

[Soapy Sam]

I still find it interesting that there are several coincidences in my and Rolfe's experience. I too was aware of the Ichneumonidae at an early age. Comparison with other events suggests I was first aware of them aged about 10-11. As Rolfe is a couple of years my senior, we may have learned of them around the same time.

Between 10 and 11 is when I started haunting the same Public Library where Rolfe was prowling at the same time, reading the same SF novels I was. It's possible we both learned of them there. (Though I don't think so for another reason).

We both thought of the Ichneumons as flies. It's probable we learned about them as flies and I think Mr.Brodie would have properly identified them as wasps, as Bug_Girl immediately did.

We both recall some surprise at having spelled the word correctly- which tends to suggest that we both heard it, rather than read it- which of course supports Rolfe's version, but could mean she heard it elsewhere and conflated that hearing with a class lecture along the lines Huntsman and others have suggested.The venerable BBC radio programme "Gardeners' Question Time" seems like a likely source to me. It's an odd coincidence that two kids should know the name.-(I did not take biology in school at all)- which was merely the first in a chain of coincidences. I'm sure were either Rolfe or I of a non-sceptical mindset, we would have been amazed and stunned by the coincidences we discovered rather than amused and entertained. Then again, we would not have been here in the first place. :)

[Rolfe]

That's hardly scratching the surface of the coincidences. I forgot what my Mum told me about phoning an order somewhere recently and she and the person on the other end finished up talking about your mother. Or maybe I didn't get that quite right, I'll have to ask her about that.

I was sitting at the same table as Bill Sharp at a funeral last week, by the way.

Rolfe.