Reality is a pretty strange place.

We like to think of it as solid, dependable, unchanging. . . “real”. It’s funkier than that. An electron evidently can be in two places at the same time. They are both particles and waves. (Flip floppers! Pick one or the other and be it, sez I!) Let’s not get started with string theory.

And then you have the Mandela Effect.

There is a phenomenon where some people collectively misremember certain things. Its name comes from Nelson Mandela. Some people absolutely remember that he died in prison in South Africa in the Eighties. The more sane among us remember that he died in 2013.

There are other examples – is it “Sex in the City” or “Sex and the City”? Is your bologna’s name Oscar Meyer” or “Oscar Mayer”? When you were a kid did you read “The Berenstain Bears” or “The Berenstein Bears”? True or false – in the movie Casablanca Rick says, “Play it again, Sam.” Does Kit Kat have a dash? Is the dash in Coca Cola a hyphen or a tilde?

Maybe they’re all electrons.

There are all kinds of explanations people have formulated to explain this. Some follow along the concept of The Matrix and we’re all in a computer that occasionally has a hiccup (maybe an electron being in two places at the same time).

One theory uses the concept of alternate universes and that we “slide” between the two (or more). The universes are enough alike so that we don’t really notice it except for these minor changes. It sounds weird EXCEPT that the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society MAY have some evidence. There’s a “cold spot” in the universe where the radiation spewed by the formation of the Universe occurred back in the Big Bang. No, I don’t understand it but that’s what they say BUT they can‘t really explain it. It shouldn’t be there and nothing drives scientists more wiggy than having something that shouldn‘t exist actually exist and they can’t rationalize it. One possible explanation (not the official one just yet) is that another “bubble universe” bounced off ours (or we bounced off them – whatever). If that were so, it would prove the existence of alternate universes of which there is an infinite number.

Of course, those of us who are geeks already know all this. Star Trek, for example, long ago discovered the Mirror Universe. And alternate universes are a stock in trade in the comics. If you lived on Earth One in the DC Universe, your reality will have changed a gazillion times. The folks at Marvel claim they have never done a real re-boot of their universe (at least they used to) but I remember issues of the Fantastic Four where they met JFK and later President Johnson. Marvel just doesn’t refer to those anymore; they aren’t part of the official canon. Mandela Effect.

Me – I’d be happy to be in one of those alt universes. If I can pick, I’d like the one where Al Gore won the presidency. The events of 9/11 might still have occurred but I don’t believe Gore would have gotten us into the Iraq War. And I think he would have taken steps to solve climate change while there was still time to do it. And, needless to say, no President Cheeto. He would never have won the Electron. . .sorry, Electoral. . . College.

Sigh.

DC and Marvel are inherently Mandela Universes. If you lived in either of them you would, on a regular basis