Ahh yes, a little piece of nostalgia for this week. You probably remember both the book series and TV show involving Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Brother and Sister teaching you life lessons in less than thirty minutes. But, how do you remember the series being spelled?
If you don't remember an "a" in the name "The Berenstain Bears", you aren't alone. Many people can recall it being spelled "Berenstein Bears", and we are all confused as to why this is.
However one trip to the dusty bookcase in the attic will prove to us that our minds are deceiving us, they appear to in fact have been spelled "ain" all along.
Why is it then that so many people (including myself) remember it being spelled "ein"? When I asked some friends and family, they all also remembered it with an "e", pronounced "Bern-steen" rather than "Bern-stane". Can it really just be a coincidence that everybody was spelling it wrong all of these years? I even found that listening to the theme song from the TV series sounded different to me than it used to. The pronunciation just seemed slightly off.
There are a few different theories out there as to what is happening. They all range from different levels of crazy, from time travel to jumping parallel universes, but whatever you believe, there's too many people remembering "Berenstein" for all of this to just be a mishap.
Some believe that someone from the future traveled back into time and made the change, however this would not be a good explanation as to why we would remember it today as "Berenstein" if it was changed in the past. Other people think that we have somehow crossed into a parallel universe where everything is exactly the same except for this one fact, which seems even more unlikely. Others simply believe the aliens are trying to mess with our heads (and if they are, they're succeeding). But what's really going on?
A great part of this has to deal with the Mandela Effect, stemming from the large amount of people who thought that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 80s, rather than in 2013 as myself along with plenty of others remember hearing on the news. These sort of things are common, one Mandela Effect even revolves around what side of Australia that New Zealand is located on. How can the human brain deceive us so much?
Humans are not perfect creatures. We do not have perfect memories, as seen countless times throughout history. False memories are certainly real phenomenons that happen every day, however the Internet gives us an easy outlet to exaggerate and find like-minded people.
Collectively, we hate to have our nostalgic memories tampered with. I'm not the sort of person to believe in conspiracy theories, but I'm not really sure what is going one here. There's way too many people believing it was "stein" for this to be wished away by believing I was just remembering my childhood incorrectly, but none of these theories has enough evidence to seem possible. Wherever you might stand on the debate, it's definitely an eerie piece of childhood trivia that seems to have no answer in sight.
