I sat down to write a true story I’ve had in my head nearly my whole life. Somehow, I ended up writing this instead:

I seem to have sent most of my life in sleepy little towns. Some are sleepier than others, of course, but there is still that indefinable air to them, something that makes them, and the thing that happen in them, the same. The people and the places differ in the little details, and yet it is these details which make them the same.

The hardware store in Monroe was just like any other hardware store. We didn’t know this as kids—we just liked it for its toy aisle full of farm toys, and the fact that it had enough interesting tools to keep us entertained for however long Dad was in there. And besides, the store held two great fascinations for me: a cat that lived there, and a lifesize cutout of the Maytag Man.

The cat was ordinary in most regards—white with black spots, one ragged ear, and maybe a little overweight. But he was extraordinary to me, because he lived in a store. His food and water dishes sat in the hall between the two sections of the store, and his bed was a blanket-lined basket under the counter. I wondered if he knew he was living a more unusual way of life for a cat, but he always seemed very complacent.

The Maytag Man seemed odder still to me.  I never entertained ideas of him being real, but I was still a little shy of him. He stood halfway down the main aisle, a little to the left—always with some new Maytag appliance display. Unlike the wooden cigar store Indian of an earlier time, he bore a cheerful expression, but like the Indian, it never changed from visit to visit. Out of politeness, and that reverence for tradition I have never been able to shake, I always made it a point to go see him before I went looking for the cat or toy aisle—but I kept my distance. After all, we had never been formally introduced.

One particular summer Saturday morning, we were making a stop at the hardware store before continuing to my grandpa’s farm. My brothers and sister had gone directly to the farm toys, but I had to go see what the Maytag Man was advertising that day. My dad stayed at the counter talking to the owner.

I had just given an appraising glance at the large sign propped up by the cardboard cutout, when the door of the hardware store burst open, and in strode the barber and two other men, the bells on the door jingling superfluously.

Now, at this point, I begin to suspect that the way I remember the barber has more to do with what he said than what he actually looked like. But I vividly recall a wild-eyed individual, with long, white, crazy hair, who looked just like Andrew Jackson, yelling, “Look, Ed! Somebody gave me a counterfeit twenty!” as he shoved the offending bill in the hardware store proprietor’s face.

I can give myself a little room to think that I might remember correctly what the barber looked like—after all, over the course of my life, I’ve met more than a few aging men who uncannily resemble Ol’ Hickory.

But, though my memory insists, I cannot allow myself to believe, or to tell you that one of the men who accompanied the barber was still wearing the black protective apron, one side of his face yet unshaven, still covered in foamy white shaving cream.

I’ve never had a great memory for details, and for years, my brain has helpfully supplied fictional ones: a shock of white hair for the barber, and sheepish grins for the customers following him.

But no matter how hard I try, I can’t push these erroneous details from my mind. Every time I replay the story inside my head, these silly details are there—more clear and vivid than the last time!

I used to fight them. Could I even trust the rest of my memory of that day, or any other? The details sounded like they were coming straight out of a Homer Price story!

But when I began to realize I couldn’t tell the difference between the straight facts and my cerebral literary embellishments, I began to suspect it didn’t matter.

If you can’t tell the difference between the crazy details that were real, and the ones that weren’t, is it important? Of course it is, I told myself. Don’t be so postmodern.

But it isn’t postmodernism I’m caught in. It’s not my individual narrative or story that matters; my story isn’t unique, or even important. It fits so well into a larger narrative: the sleepy small town that characterized not only the childhood I really lived, but the childhood I vicariously lived in so much American literature. Fiction hadn’t been confused for reality; reality had imitated fiction that imitates reality.

I don’t remember what happened with the counterfeit twenty. I suspect the men did what I’ve always seen small town men do—stand around, remark, “Yep,” or “Yessir” a few times, before going back to whatever they were doing beforehand. It doesn’t matter.

I thought my stories were unique. But the fictional details my brain supplies me remind me that they’re not. These stories have been going on for decades, all over the country. The things which I thought made me special are actually the very things  which make me quite, quite ordinary.