A sip here, a slip there.

Drunken memory is never 100% proof.

"Look," she said with a voice full of drink. "Mark said that he believes..."

And that thing I am supposed to believe is not the thing I believe at all, or ever said I did, not even close. The memory of drink (and of drugs) is often a memory that has been diluted, distilled, and has been cleared of any of the microbes of truth. The bottle remains the same, in the same shape, but the content no longer has the intended taste.

It is hard to fix a drunken memory, because to that person the memory is their memory of whatever it is they think they remember. If it isn't on video they will fight you tooth and nail over that memory, even if you have 10 other people who remember it as it really happened.

Live and let live, I like to say, and live and let die. To each his or her own. Let them have their memories, their faulted opinions, their murky recollections. What harm to let them live in their own besotted world! But there is harm, much harm, to be done to you and to others, because those alcohol churned memories seldom go unspoken and unexpressed.

It is a truth that those with the least to say of their own speak volumes on the lives of others.

One hopes and prays that the memory spoken has not been fermented.