Potato Salad Sensei

Sitting in McMillians last night, as I was, with my parents was the scene. We'd bumped into an old aquaintance of my mother's, a former teaching colleague to be precise. As the back and forth conversation twisted and turned to friends, co-workers, sad tales, and news, I took notice of a quirk most people have. That is, our relationship with a person or object shapes our memories of them.

The person that prompted this observation was an older gentleman, married to a former teacher that both my mother and her aquaintance had worked with. As they shared memories and news of this gentleman, I began to get a patchwork image of him in my head. My mother spoke of him in terms of her knowledge of he and his wife, giving memories of them both together. Her aquaintance knew of him more directly, and the way she spoke of him gave me a more direct image. Finally, my father mentioned that he knew this gentleman was left-handed, having played baseball against him years ago.

Each of them contributed to my mental picture of this man in their own ways, based on how they had intereacted with him in the past. I'd wager that none of them could have described him in the ways the others had, even though they all had known him fairly well.



Also @ Matty, EvRotten, Stump, and STH, the streak continues.