This story, written by Artemis Moshtaghian and Lawrence Crook III and presented on CNN.com, sounds like something you’d find in a Robert Ludlum book…

Police: Man remembers who he is after 30 years

I have to say, as I was reading the article I kept thinking this was simply some kind of ruse, that the man who had amnesia about his past just couldn’t have had it, that he was fleeing some kind of familiar relationship he no longer wanted any part of and/or had a second “life” with someone else he preferred.

It reminded me of one of the segments of a Zucker/Abrahams’ forgotten comedy creation, Our Planet Tonight (1987), which itself was a parody of the 20/20, 60 Minutes, etc. news shows.  In it we have a report on how these two twin brothers were separated at birth and yet live such extraordinarily similar lives while -supposedly unknowingly- also lived in the very same town and in very close proximity to each other.

The upshot of the skit/pseudo-news report (if you haven’t clicked above to see it, you should!) was that there were no twin brothers and the man they were following was in actuality a bigamist with two different wives/lives who, now that he was being investigated for this show, had to pretend mightily he and his “other” were twins.  The hosts of the news show hilariously miss all the evidence right in front of their face that points to the fact that these men are one and the same, including how they use the “same type of car” or “work in the same place” yet how, in the reporter’s words, hadn’t once crossed each other’s path!

Toward the end of the episode, the reporter wanted to bring the “twins” together to meet and it was hilarious how “each” twin stated that they didn’t want to meet just yet that they had to digest this information and didn’t want to traumatize the other.

Hilarious stuff and, yes, I was thinking of exactly that when I started reading the above article.  I suppose that’s the cynic in me.

Anyway, my cynicism was quickly banished when I found out the man who had this extended amnesia is mentally disabled and has an intellectual development of a 12 year old.  While I would be suspicious if a perfectly “normal” man made such a wild claim, it makes more sense in this case that this developmentally disabled individual wouldn’t have the capacity or desire to make such a thing up.

Which makes the story, and the fact that this man and his family will finally be getting together, nothing less than heartwarming.

Even to a cynic like me.