Fun fact #1: My brain thinks no one can recognize me if I'm wearing my glasses. I believe this in spite of the fact that it is patently ridiculous. I have no trouble identifying other people who normally don't wear glasses if I chance upon them with glasses on, or vice versa. Why would my brain think that my identity could be more transformed by glasses than anyone else's?
How I noticed: I had been waiting tables in a diner and some regular customers didn't know who I was. At the time I attributed this to the fact that I had stopped (started?) wearing glasses since the last time I had seen them. This situation recurred, in one form or another, for several years. In retrospect, I am forced to conclude that I am just not that memorable.
Fun fact #2: My brain perceives the wearing of earrings as a sign of competence. Whenever I am wearing earrings, I feel more self-possessed, connected to the world, and ready to confront unfamiliar circumstances.
How I noticed: Standing on a subway platform in NYC. I was a bit lost and felt like a conspicuous tourist, and then I remembered: I was wearing hoop earrings. Clearly, I belonged here and was in full command of this situation. I remember thinking something irrational like "Everything's fine. You're wearing hoop earrings. You've got this."
Fun fact #3: With the right encouragement, my brain is very good at identifying and synthesizing important pieces of information in a hurry.
How I noticed: I arrived at the train station in downtown Montreal four minutes before my train was supposed to leave. I had never been there, and it was a sprawling, bustling, multi-storied building...yet I still made my train. I told my brain "your train is here and so is the information that will guide you to it. Find." My eyes sought and found the relevant arrivals and departures board, then pin-balled from arrowed sign to arrowed sign with my body in tow until I just strolled into the right train car headed toward the right destination moments before we pulled out of the station. I've since been able to repeat this experiment in turning myself over to my brain's command with almost uniform success. This is why I am in charge of all the snap decision-making in my marriage.
Fun fact #4: My brain thinks that because it speaks two languages, it speaks all languages. I speak fluent English and Spanish, and have a smattering of French and vestigial German from minoring in it in college. My brain gets really irritated when I overhear someone speaking anything that isn't one of those languages and continues to struggle impotently to understand.
How I noticed: I was in the grocery store and heard some gentlemen conversing in Hebrew. I couldn't quite accept that I couldn't understand them, and just about wore myself out trying to make sense of what they were saying. It's a wonder that I didn't get kicked out of the grocery store for following them around and (not very effectively) eavesdropping on their conversation. I have also witnessed several situations in which people are having a hard time communicating due to a language barrier, and been tempted to step in and say "I'll handle this", only to discover that I have no better linguistic or extra-linguistic tools than the actual participants in the conversation. I suppose it's true that my odds are better than many people's, but still... seriously, brain? Who do you think you are?
Fun fact #5: My brain inherently trusts the prematurely balding. This is either a genius insight into the human soul, or potentially perilous. Regardless, combined with Fun Facts #1-2 and 4, it would make me an exceptionally crummy secret agent.
How I noticed: I have actually written about this episode before, somewhere, and maybe I can even look it up for you, although I probably won't, but suffice it to say that it's probably a miracle that I'm still alive. I was stumbling around Veracruz, Mexico, trying to overcome the previous night's food poisoning armed with nothing but a digital camera, a bottle of Gatorade and the sheer force of will, when I decided to take a break from the oppressive heat by slumping against a heavily-graffitied wall in a somewhat secluded part of downtown and laying my head against the cool concrete. A young man in a baseball cap approached me and tried to convince me to come home with him, because I was green and obviously foreign and dehydrated and lost under the midday sun and it was about 97 degrees out. This (yes, this part, specifically), I thought, was a bad idea. I spent what was left of my energy trying to get him to go away and leave me alone, when after about 20 minutes he ripped off his baseball cap in frustration. I immediately noticed that at age 27, he had lost nearly all his hair. "Oh," my brain said. "In that case." I went home with him, and he introduced me to his grandmother, and we ate pineapple and listened to the radio for a while.
Although it doesn't happen often, I really enjoy it when my brain makes itself so transparent to me. I depend on it pretty heavily because, like many people, I think for a living. When my brain declares its independence from me in these little ways, I get to remember that it and I are not synonymous. It's comforting, somehow, to know that my brain isn't always empirically correct, and that other parts of me might have the right idea from time to time.
