There are two mind tweaks I’m sure we’re all familiar with.

One is deja vu, which is loosely defined as that weird sensation that, suddenly and for no reason, you think you’re reliving an experience, but you can’t figure out from when or where. You only know — or at least you think you know — this is a video rerun of some specific instance in your life.

Maybe you’re visiting a place you’ve never been, for example some distant and exotic land. You’re walking down a narrow unpaved street lined on both sides with buildings unlike any you’ve seen, full of people speaking a language you’ve never heard, and you’re looking at signs written in a script you can’t even start to decipher when — suddenly, like a hit amidships! — you’re struck with this feeling. No, not a feeling — more like a certainty — that you’ve been there before.

That place, no matter how foreign, is one you were once in. Not one you read about or were told about or saw in a movie, but one you actually experienced!

And then, almost as fast as that image arrived, it’s gone. And there you are, back in the middle of a place you know nothing about, and never did.

Or did you?

The second phenomenon is less common than deja vu, and I think it happens more often the older you get — at least it has with me. It also has no label I’ve ever heard. With this one you’re telling a story from Way Back When that you’ve told repeatedly, if not what your friends would consider endlessly. Then, later, in a moment of quiet reflection, you wonder how much of that story happened the way you told it. You mull over it a bit, and in a fit of brutal honesty, you wonder if it happened at all? Of maybe it happened, but to someone else. But you’ve told it so many times, you now think you were the star of the show.

Sure, over time, in retelling any of our stories, some details get forgotten, some get added, and others get embellished. But in this case, when you think about it, long, hard and objectively, you don’t know if it happened at all. And since it’s hard if not impossible to verify, it just swirls around in the inner recesses of your mind like dust motes in a long-unvisited attic.

Oddly, last week I had an experience that combined those two phenomena.

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Judgment at Aldi

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I was in Aldi’s cheese section, agonizing over whether to get the Edam or the Gouda, when a sharp, almost metallic voice pierced my concentration, not to mention almost piecing my eardrums.

“So, how’s Mr. Winter Carnival? it said.

I turned to look at Gloria “Genghis” Conn, The Scourge of Blue Linekind.

GG is the most negative person I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing. Without going into endless detail, she can best be summed up as someone who likes nothing and no one … and who is roundly disliked in return.

Ironically, she’s a treat to look at: She’s a statuesque brunette with long hair and piercing light blue eyes. Unfortunately, in her case, beauty being only skin deep applies. With her looks, she has no problem attracting men, but to use the old cliche, she can hook, but she can’t hold. And so she leaves in her wake a trail strewn with blocked social media, unlisted phone numbers, and changed door locks. Likewise, she goes through jobs like poop through a goose, getting canned from all of them — through no fault of her own, of course.

Our convo in Aldi, such as it was, consisted of her ranting about how much she hates Winter Carnival cuz it’s nothing but a townful of boozers.

Oh, if only she knew, I thought.

She’s lived here for about ten years, so she has no idea what a townful of Carnival boozers looks like. But I sure do.

Carnival is now 10 days long, and while there’s drinking, it’s a tiny part of what’s a family-friendly blast-and-a-half. But in The Good Old Days, when Carnival was four days long, when the town had a almost twice the population and 39 bars to go with it, and the drinking age was 18, it was indeed one huge pub crawl.

The open container law was in the books … and that’s the only place it was. Drinking during the parade? Let’s just say our constabulary turned Nelson’s Eye to it, as long as the imbibers acted decently. And if they didn’t, they got rewarded with a fat fine and maybe a night’s stay in the hoosegow.

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Time travelin’

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And now here’s my tie-in with deja-vu and my not knowing if a story I told was true or not.

Having gone to about 70 Carnival parades, the details tend to run together, but one detail I never forgot took place in the ’66 parade. It was The Chuckwagon, Chuck’s Bar’s entry.

What was so memorable about it? Just this: It was a VW Microbus full of kegs, with guys in the bus filling up cups and handing them out to one and all. I was watching the parade in front of Chuck’s, and aside from snagging a cup for myself, I remember a guy pushing his way to the van with an empty pitcher from the bar … and having the guys fill that up. But that was about it for details.

But did it happen like that? Or more to the point, did it happen at all?

I was sure it did, but had no way of proving it — till a few weeks ago.

Dig this: I was on Facebook, scrolling through the usual postings of people’s dinners, pets, snow blowers and grandchildren; conspiracy theories only a card-carrying moron would believe; photos of The Golden Age (variously the 1920s, WWII, the ’50s, the ’60s, the ’70s, etc); book promos by Pulitzer wannabes; secrets of immortality and of course advertisements for all manner of dreck.

And then, suddenly, in mid-scroll, there appeared a segment of old 8 mm home movie of a Winter Carnival parade. And not just any parade — it was the 1966 one. And guess what the focal scene was? If you guessed The Chuckwagon, you guessed absolutely right!

So was it as I’d remembered?

Well, when I saw it, there were all sorts of details I’d forgotten. For example, Post-its were stuck all over the van, and some guy was riding on the roof. Plus there was other stuff I couldn’t remember, but when it came to the basic story, yeah, I got it right.

And here’s the most interesting part (at least to me) and the deja vu segment of my tale: Whoever filmed the parade did it from in front of Chuck’s. So not only was I looking at the Chuckwagon film on Facebook, but I was looking at it from almost the exact spot I’d stood in. Whoever had filmed it, bless their soul, had done it standing practically in my hip pocket!

So for the most part, I was right about The Chuckwagon.

And how did that make me feel?

Great … but not about being right.

The best part of seeing the film can be divided into two things.

One was seeing people, now long gone, having a hoot at a nutty, sub-zero Carnival parade.

The other was it got me ramped up for another nutty, even better Carnival parade.

It all points out another one of life’s great ironies: I’m not getting better with age, but luckily, Winter Carnival is.