Galvin crop

Blame Jerry Lewis.

We were going the wrong way — as in, farther from the car — on a Prescott Park trail this past weekend when I asked her to remind me about Jerry Lewis.

Now, you would think my primary objective would be to get us turned around and back to the parking lot, but she takes the point when we head off on what some would say is a hike … but is truly nothing more than a breathtaking and breath-taking jaunt.

Jerry Lewis — who, after all, has been dead since 2017 — only was responsible tangentially for our predicament. As I fell behind while trying to avoid tripping over stones, I heard myself saying, “Hey laaaaaaaadeeeee” in an attempt to get her to at least slow down.

She asked what I wanted, and I told her to remind me later about Jerry Lewis.

So there we were, and here we are.

Back in the days of yore — say, when Jerry Lewis was still with us — I would be spending Labor Day weekend watching him slowly melt into a puddle of goo as he raised money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association on his yearly telethon.

Some years, I even refrained from hitting the mute button.

Now, though, Jerry is long gone, and I had no idea as to whether there was a telethon this year, which led to our being out of our element on this Prescott Park trail.

With no puddle of goo to bemuse me, I found myself embroiled in the lowest common denominator of public discourse — a meaningless internet brouhaha.

This one was especially meaningless. In a discussion of Jimmy Buffet’s demise, someone had posted that the Parrot Head guru often sang “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” at concerts because fans mistakenly thought that he — and not Rupert Hines — had hatched that earworm of anfractuosity.

You see the problem.

Right?

Immediately, the poster was at the bottom of a good ol’ fashioned pig-pile, as one respondent after another claimed s/he/they indeed did have half-a-brain in slithering to the defense, as it were, of songwriter Rupert Holmes.

Not so, the fracas originator fought back. Look, s/he/they said, here are all these internet links to support my claim.

We looked. We saw. We were not conquered.

Rupert Hine (no final ’s,’ by the way) indeed was a pop singer, who had died three years after Jerry Lewis, and did have a notable song or two in his native Britain.

And there were some sketchy cyber references that had referred to him as the musician behind “Escape (The Pina Colada Song) — but, of course, they were mistaken, erroneous, fallacious and wrong.

So there.

The battle, however, continued — as meaningless internet brouhahas are wont to do — leaving me grousing and grumbling in my recliner without even Jerry and his pantheon of pal-ees to bemuse me.

“I know,” my own lovely lady said. “Let’s go for a hike.”

Jaunt, but whatever, there we were. And there we are.

The thing is, it wasn’t so much that s/he/they didn’t know the difference between Rupert Hine(s) and Rupert Holmes. It was, as I later realized, that they could find supporting “evidence” on the internet.

There’s a premise called The Mandela Effect which, basically, posits that we become so convinced by “facts” that are not actually “facts” that we can’t accept it when the truth is presented before us.

It’s so-named because of the many who confusedly believe that the late South African leader actually died while under arrest in South Africa.

Which, in case you’re one of those confused, he did not. He passed away four years before Jerry Lewis, and 23 years after he was released from custody.

The Mandela Effect, however, is alive and well. We see it every day.

It’s not always so trivial as who wrote “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” — it was Rupert Holmes — or who did or didn’t win an Oscar for “Saving Private Ryan” (Spielberg yes, Hanks no).

We see it in the very issues that mean so much in our lives. The belief in misinformation that creates chasms between us on cultural, social and political matters.

It’s maddening and sad and painful to live with on a daily basis. It’s why pig-piles erupt online out of minor squabbles — because we’re tired of going through the same old dull routine over the major ones.

It’s no wonder that we’re — metaphorically, at least — a puddle of goo on this trail we’re on, uncertain of which way to proceed.

And, for one day at least, I could blame this feeling on Jerry Lewis.