I didn’t see last year’s half-time show, either, and I realized the other day that I’ve seen very few Super Bowl half-times in my life. I decided to look up the list of half-times just to see how many I remember.
The first half-time I ever saw was Michael Jackson. I remember the audience flipping over cards to create images of children holding hands around the stadium. That’s was in 1993 and the first time I’d ever heard of the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl (and the Dallas Cowboys) came into my life via my step-brother, James. Prior to that, I couldn’t have named a single football team to save my life.
Other than Michael Jackson, I only remember seeing some of Katy Parry and some of J-Lo/Shakira. I watched all of Justin Timberlake’s most recent half-time and all of Maroon 5’s. I might have caught a glimpse of Eminem’s.
And I swear I saw Janet Jackson and the wardrobe malfunction LIVE. This where I discovered a glitch in my memory, and it’s bothering me.
When I was a junior in high school, I worked at a craft boutique in a mall. One night during my shift, I started feeling really tired and got body aches. It came on really fast. When I arrived at work, I felt fine, and by the end of the night, I was laying on a bench in the store shivering and falling asleep.
The next morning I tried to go to dance practice, and I ended up getting really nauseous and throwing up in the garbage can in the hallway of the school. I went home and slept for the rest of the day. The following day I tried going to school again, and I got nauseous during my first period photography class. My teacher wasn’t in the room, and when I felt the urge to puke, I took off running out to the hallway in hopes of making it to the bathroom. Instead I ran head on into my photography teacher who was coming down the hall, and I threw up all over the floor and his shoes. He grabbed a garbage can as fast as he could. I was so embarrassed. Then he wrote me a note to take to the office to call my mom. It said, “She is sick,” and it had an arrow. He told me I had to hold it in front of me with the arrow pointing toward my head. I went home, and my mom took me to the doctor where I was told that I had Influenza A.
I had never heard the word “influenza.” Flu, yes, but not influenza. I didn’t know flu shots existed, and I didn’t really understand what the flu was (I thought the flu was a stomach bug).
Once I had a diagnosis, I stopped trying to go to school, and I slept for several days. One of those days was Super Bowl Sunday. I remember having the Super Bowl on while I slept on the couch in the family room. I woke up just long enough to watch the half-time show - Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. I saw the incident happen. I was confused and thought maybe it wasn’t what I thought it was. Then I fell back into a feverish slumber, and when I finally woke back up, the phrase “wardrobe malfunction” had taken over the universe.
For over twenty years, this is how I remember it happening.
But now I have to question every memory I’ve ever had because when I was looking at the list of Super Bowl half-times, it said that Janet Jackson did the half-time in 2004. I had to check a few different sources because I didn’t believe it! It couldn’t have been 2004 because I had Influenza A when I was a junior in high school in 2001. Yet, all the records show 2004.
If the wardrobe malfunction happened in 2004 that means that I was graduated, married, and had just been given the keys to our first home that very day. I don’t remember if or where we watched the Super Bowl that year. I don’t remember seeing Janet’s boob on the day we got our house.
What I do remember is seeing Janet Jackson’s boob from my mom’s basement couch in between flu naps. But it can’t have happened that way unless the entire world and internet has conspired to gaslight me.
I know that memory can be a trippy and unreliable thing, but I really don’t like this. I don’t like that I’m remembering something wrong! If I remember this thing wrong, how many other things am I remembering wrong?
What if I’m wrong… a lot? As a person who’s always right, that’s really going to mess me up!
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