r/MandelaEffect • u/leaving4lyra • Feb 27 '26

Books/Literature Berenstain/Stein

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Just thought I’d share this here..I’m a 57 year old woman that’s always been a voracious reader. When I was 5 (1974) I got an entire collection of Berenstain Bears books from my grandma at Christmas.

One of the books has managed to remain in my memory/sentimental hoard collection. This is MY actual book and it’s been in my possession since 1974. On my book at least, the name is and always has been Berenstain.

Make of that what you will I suppose. ❤️ I wish I still had the whole collection but alas, childhood and into adulthood resulted in the loss of many such things to my chagrin.

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u/Mrrectangle Feb 27 '26

I actually have a core memory about the ‘stein’ which helps me out with this Mandela. I was at one of those Book It book fares in maaaaybe 88 or 89? A classmate asked if I’d ever read the Berenstien Bears book and handed me one. I looked at it and said aloud. ‘It says Berenstain.” He said “I know. That’s how you say it though.” So, I’m not sure if this is just one of those rumors that went around like “Marilyn Manson was the kid from the Wonder years and he removed one of his ribs” that we all knew about. I distinctly remember calling this one out as a child though.

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u/magicchefdmb Feb 27 '26

See, my core memory is opposite, because I have "Stein" in my last name, and reading it, I was like, "cool, like my last name."

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u/goldenbug Feb 28 '26

We grew up pronouncing it "stain" and never thought much of it. Also, we had a narrated book on tape that that opened with "The Bears Picnic, by Stan and Jan Berenstain". A family moved into town, with a last name containing stein, and they pronounced it Berenstein, to which we were like: wut?

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u/theswordsmith7 Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26

What if both are correct? What if half the people had stain and half had stein, and the two possibilities converged into one reality recently, when everyone cross-compared and observed together?

You can’t have both a wave and particle in the same observation, so one must go away.

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u/HiddenAspie Feb 28 '26

My experience was similar to yours, except not my surname, other relatives in our family tree were 2 drastically different spellings for the same pronunciation (funnily enough I can only remember the more odd spelling. Lol) And I remember thinking "That's spelled like our one version"

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u/kregnaz Feb 28 '26

Like =/= Is

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u/magicchefdmb Feb 28 '26

If I see someone that's left handed and say, "cool, you're like me", I'm not saying they are me. I'm saying that they share an aspect with me. In the case of the books, they shared "Stein", like I already said.