A few years ago I wrote a post on here about my son, and his first ‘time slip.’ He seemed to recall at that age (and still does not at the age of 6) that red lights used to be on the top and now they are on the bottom.. I wrote about how perplexing this was to me then, and still is now.
Since that time, there have been countless YouTube broadcasts and websites dedicated to the Mandela Effect, and have included this traffic light conundrum within ..
Along with that, I am constantly amazed at reading commentary on videos and stories of people who believe to recall a time where they know traffic lights were reversed. Where the green was high up and the red sat on the bottom–the opposite of what we know in this reality.
Before buying into a theory of time slips and reality shifts you also need to conjure up any scientific rationale or reasons your brain could be slipping more than your reality.
Maybe Tipperary Hillin Syracuse NY could be a good reason for this traffic light confusion. Maybe you never visited, but if you saw a photo of their famed reverse traffic light, maybe that stuck in your head. The popular story of the light is that the Irish in that section of town would not be able to live with the British red light on top of their Irish green.. so they changed things up. It is also interesting to note that this red light is the only place in America where it’s legal to have the traffic light different. It’s a bit of a tourist attraction as well.
Now..very few of you may have been to Syracuse to see this light. But .. is it possible that you have seen images. That you have heard stories.. perhaps news articles.. and that photo of the traffic signal stuck in your head because of how different it is?
Your brain does some remarkable bad things. For example, only a year ago, I recall myself sitting at a traffic light that turned green for a bit too much. I realized it turned green but my brain wasn’t working to its highest degree and it just kept thinking “red” .. Horns blowing at my from behind woke me up a bit to realize I need to go. That said, I have equally witnessed people who stop at green lights and go on red.
Our brains are supposed to protect us, maybe.. so often it seems their slippage could kill.
I offer up this Syracuse NY story as only food for thought. It does not prove or disprove anything.
As someone who has written about personal timeslips and strange moments where I think I believed something existed until I found out it didn’t, I will be the last to judge someone else or decry their belief system as fraudulent ..
But we need to equally take a moment of calm thought and ponder just what our eyes have seen, what our brain has processed, and if our memories really are what they seem to be.
