Recognition

It's nifty sometimes when you notice the way your brain functions. I was in the queue our favourite chinese BBQ place, when I saw someone in the queue ahead of me that I recognized. You know how it is when you recognize someone - it's a "Bam! I know that guy" feeling. There's obviously specialized
brain hardware to take care of that sort of thing. But that really important bit of brain hardware doesn't always link to that actual useful information about the person.

So there I am, thinking "I know that guy. Who the hell is he?" I ponder a while. He doesn't look quite right. Has he had a haircut? Wearing something unusual? Older? In the wrong context?

I don't know about you, but my brain stores people by contexts. If I know someone from work, then they're stored as a Work Person, and if I bump into them elsewhere, I'm all "Hi there, person I recognize but don't know who the hell is". Often when walking though the street I'll see people who work in shops I frequent, who don't necessarily recognize me, and who look confused when I do the wave-or-nod-of-recognition thing that people do when the see people they kind-of-know in the street.

So back to the BBQ shop, where I'm standing there now thinking "hmm. He's definitely out of context. Doesn't look like someone I work with; can't really figure out where in my world he'd fit". This was gradually followed by a "hmm. He looks less crazy than usual". A glance about the shop at the guy chopping a duck up with a huge meat cleaver reminds me that The Guy should normally be waving a meat cleaver around dementedly.

In a pizza shop.

Hey! It's that guy From Fat Pizza! (Better not do the wave-of-recognition thing - might freak him out... though he's probably used to it)

That's it - Bobo!

By this stage I've noticed him glancing across at me, mildly amused at me looking at him, seemingly pleased that his minor level of celebrity has got him recognized in Campsie.

Well anyway, it's good to know that Bobo agrees with my taste in Chinese BBQ. And who'd've thought he would have a daughter?

Sorry to bore you with this. It was interesting at the time because there was a part of my brain sitting there watching the whole process of recognition and recall going on which I actually found much more interesting than the event itself, as it demonstrated the interactions between different brain modules as they each did their dodgy job of trying to extract information about something in front of me.