Recognition and misrecognition
This posting was prompted by a spooky coincidence that came to my attention last night. Here, two quick Pangea-type anecdotes on misrecognition, and then a series of small-world type anecdotes, many of which hinge on recognition. All have taken place since my move to Spookytown.
MISRECOGNITION
1. I'm at the first meeting of an anthropology database workshop, I guess I'm on the advisory committee now (at least, that's what it says on the new line in my CV). At the mini-reception after the meeting, one of the anthropologists walks up to me and, apropos of nothing, says, "Are you Indian?" "Why, no," I say, and leave to get a drink.
2. It's Thanksgiving and I'm at my cousin's house, where I've been going to various family events for more than 20 years. Even though she's only in her early late forties, she has a new granddaughter -- as with many modern Orthodox, she got married quite early, and her son did too. Her son and daugher-in-law stopped by for a while with the baby and also with the daughter-in-law's parents. I was up in the living room with the baby and its (not-related-to-me) grandparents when she started crying, so I picked her up and started talking to her a bit in Yiddish and then singing to her to calm her down. Her grandmother, the one who is not my cousin, looked at me and said, "How do you know Yiddish?" "Well," I said, "I only know a little, not nearly as much as I'd like." "But how do you know Yiddish? Aren't you Puerto Rican?"
RECOGNITION
So I've been keeping two topics off limits on these pages, entertaining as they may be: work and my love life. (My feeling is that these are better covered via other channels.) But now I'm going to bring in some dating stories, because they're really necessary to get the full effect of the ridiculous "small world" stuff that keeps happening to me here. When I first moved to Spookytown, I kind of dated up a storm in an internet dating kind of way -- I found some of my best friends in Chicago this way, in addition to some boyfriend types, so I'm willing to sift through lots of chaff to get to the occasional golden wheat kernel. Or whatever. Anway, I'm on hiatus now (12 guys in 2 months = kind of exhausting), but as recently as last night realized that I am still dealing with "small world" fallout from this dating storm. So I'm including them here in my Spookytown recognition stories.
1. I go out with a physicist on Friday, and make plans to see him the following Friday, even though my hopes are not high (more of a "second chance" kind of date). On the Wednesday between these Fridays I go out with a neuroscientist to this bar/restaurant that I had never been to before (and have not been to since), in a neighborhood I was visiting for the first time. Before we leave, the neuroscientist says, "Let's go up and check out the roof bar, I think you'll like it." We do, and who do we run into within seconds? Yes, the physicist. (Would have been more awkward if I'd actually really liked either of them.)
2. The following week I go out with this conflict resolutionist in a neighborhood I'd never been to. After the date I'm in the metro station (the only time I have been in this station in 3 1/2 months now) and this guy walks by, does a double take, comes back and says, "Excuse me." "Yes?" "Don't I know you from [internet dating site X]?" J-ka, upon hearing this, said, "It would be my worst nightmare!" But in reality it wasn't so bad, if a bit creepy at times (e.g., when he said, "but, as I recall, you're originally from New York, right?"), and it was quite easy to write the gentle-but-firm rejection when he wrote to me later that night.
3. The Armenian Queen befriends another resident of her yuppie apartment building just before he moves out. "You should meet him," she says, "I think you have a lot in common." After hearing more about him, I agree to meet up in a friendly-type way, not a set-up type way, since he doesn't quite sound like someone I'd date, and we arrange to all meet at Queenie's house and then go to dinner and a movie together. I get there first, and when he walks in the door I say, "Oh, it's you! Hi!" Because I have met this man many times before -- he has been my waiter almost every time I have been to the only restaurant in HippyDippyville that I actually like. He served me my first meal here when I was apartment hunting, he served me and Dad our first meal here when we first drove into town, he served me and my parents and Stovie and J-ka their last meal here before they drove away after helping me unpack. And, just a few days previously, when I had been on the last of my internet first dates, this one a Sunday brunch, he had brought our food to the table when our own waitperson had been apparently too incompetent to do it (leading me to to tell my date about a few funny interactions between this waiter and my Dad, who prefers a more New-York-hustle style of waiting tables). Two particularly funny things come from this. The first was that he did not remember me at all, like I didn't look familiar or anything, which is entertaining since we'd really spoken quite a bit over the course of the previous few months. The second is that to top it all off, this overly young guy had written to me online and I had written back and said, "I'm now on hiatus, but we could meet up in a friendly-type way," and he responded and said, among other things, "Hey, wasn't that you at [place X] on Sunday at brunch?" So on this one Sunday morning, 2 months after my arrival, I was sitting in this 50-seat restaurant with one date, just two tables away from another guy who wanted to date me, and was served food by a third guy that my friend was trying to set me up with.
4. Oh, we're still going. My friend G.G., who was until recently a conference friend only but turns out to spend lots of time in Spookytown (on purpose!), said recently, "I should introduce you to some of my friends, I think you'd get along." G.G. is great, the kind of person I love to spend time with and feel comfortable with even though I don't know her all that well, so this boded well for her friends. So the other night we go out with Lieberman, who sounded really cool -- I didn't know what she did for a living, but had seen some of her art photographs, which were quite good. Now Lieberman looks kind of familiar, in a tickling-the-back-of-your-mind kind of way, but I let it go until she turns to me in the middle of dinner and says, "Wait, did you present a paper at the MLA in New York in 2002? I was on your panel!" And in fact, I had sat next to her for a solid hour and a half at that thing, and now remember her and her paper well -- I think it's the change in both hairstyle and glasses that kept me from making the connection. Then at post-dinner drinks, her husband comes in, and looks intensely familiar. But I figure that I'm primed to look for familiarity now, with the Lieberman-MLA thing, so dismiss it. Yet after about twenty minutes he turns to me and says, "I've met you before. Where do I know you from?" We went through all the cities we've been in over the last five years, and all the social gatherings here in Spookytown (for me, that totals 3, so it was pretty easy), but couldn't figure it out. But I definitely know him from somewhere...
5. The last one (for now). About a month ago (maybe a bit more) this handsome Swede writes to me online, seems pretty good in lots of ways, but then ends up writing something kind of stupid. I call him on it, and even though he apologizes things kind of degenerate, and we end up not meeting up. Cut to the other day, when he shows up again in my inbox, saying that he's just moved to HippyDippyville, doesn't know people here, still feels terrible about the whole e-mail thing, wonders if we could meet up in a low-pressure friendly way, as it would be nice to know someone here. This seemed fine to me, so we arranged to meet up for a drink in this nice bar one town over. Assuming he lived close to the metro, I had told him the general area of HippyDippyville where I lived, nothing too recognizable, and when he offered to pick me up (which I would never agree to, of course) he wrote, "We might live closer than you think. Do you know the blinking light at the bottom of [Street X]? I live about a block and a half in." Well, my friends, *I* live on that street, just a block in. And it turns out that he is, in fact, now my next-door neighbor. As in his house is directly behind my house, such that our driveways are adjacent. It's a good thing that we won't be dating, and that he isn't stalkeresque -- he's a good guy, and a cat lover, so now I get to have a friend next door and, once I know him better and trust him, a convenient cat sitter. So that's cheered me up some.
And therein lies my epic tale showing, once again, the world is in fact a quite tiny place. More to come, I'm sure!
MISRECOGNITION
1. I'm at the first meeting of an anthropology database workshop, I guess I'm on the advisory committee now (at least, that's what it says on the new line in my CV). At the mini-reception after the meeting, one of the anthropologists walks up to me and, apropos of nothing, says, "Are you Indian?" "Why, no," I say, and leave to get a drink.
2. It's Thanksgiving and I'm at my cousin's house, where I've been going to various family events for more than 20 years. Even though she's only in her early late forties, she has a new granddaughter -- as with many modern Orthodox, she got married quite early, and her son did too. Her son and daugher-in-law stopped by for a while with the baby and also with the daughter-in-law's parents. I was up in the living room with the baby and its (not-related-to-me) grandparents when she started crying, so I picked her up and started talking to her a bit in Yiddish and then singing to her to calm her down. Her grandmother, the one who is not my cousin, looked at me and said, "How do you know Yiddish?" "Well," I said, "I only know a little, not nearly as much as I'd like." "But how do you know Yiddish? Aren't you Puerto Rican?"
RECOGNITION
So I've been keeping two topics off limits on these pages, entertaining as they may be: work and my love life. (My feeling is that these are better covered via other channels.) But now I'm going to bring in some dating stories, because they're really necessary to get the full effect of the ridiculous "small world" stuff that keeps happening to me here. When I first moved to Spookytown, I kind of dated up a storm in an internet dating kind of way -- I found some of my best friends in Chicago this way, in addition to some boyfriend types, so I'm willing to sift through lots of chaff to get to the occasional golden wheat kernel. Or whatever. Anway, I'm on hiatus now (12 guys in 2 months = kind of exhausting), but as recently as last night realized that I am still dealing with "small world" fallout from this dating storm. So I'm including them here in my Spookytown recognition stories.
1. I go out with a physicist on Friday, and make plans to see him the following Friday, even though my hopes are not high (more of a "second chance" kind of date). On the Wednesday between these Fridays I go out with a neuroscientist to this bar/restaurant that I had never been to before (and have not been to since), in a neighborhood I was visiting for the first time. Before we leave, the neuroscientist says, "Let's go up and check out the roof bar, I think you'll like it." We do, and who do we run into within seconds? Yes, the physicist. (Would have been more awkward if I'd actually really liked either of them.)
2. The following week I go out with this conflict resolutionist in a neighborhood I'd never been to. After the date I'm in the metro station (the only time I have been in this station in 3 1/2 months now) and this guy walks by, does a double take, comes back and says, "Excuse me." "Yes?" "Don't I know you from [internet dating site X]?" J-ka, upon hearing this, said, "It would be my worst nightmare!" But in reality it wasn't so bad, if a bit creepy at times (e.g., when he said, "but, as I recall, you're originally from New York, right?"), and it was quite easy to write the gentle-but-firm rejection when he wrote to me later that night.
3. The Armenian Queen befriends another resident of her yuppie apartment building just before he moves out. "You should meet him," she says, "I think you have a lot in common." After hearing more about him, I agree to meet up in a friendly-type way, not a set-up type way, since he doesn't quite sound like someone I'd date, and we arrange to all meet at Queenie's house and then go to dinner and a movie together. I get there first, and when he walks in the door I say, "Oh, it's you! Hi!" Because I have met this man many times before -- he has been my waiter almost every time I have been to the only restaurant in HippyDippyville that I actually like. He served me my first meal here when I was apartment hunting, he served me and Dad our first meal here when we first drove into town, he served me and my parents and Stovie and J-ka their last meal here before they drove away after helping me unpack. And, just a few days previously, when I had been on the last of my internet first dates, this one a Sunday brunch, he had brought our food to the table when our own waitperson had been apparently too incompetent to do it (leading me to to tell my date about a few funny interactions between this waiter and my Dad, who prefers a more New-York-hustle style of waiting tables). Two particularly funny things come from this. The first was that he did not remember me at all, like I didn't look familiar or anything, which is entertaining since we'd really spoken quite a bit over the course of the previous few months. The second is that to top it all off, this overly young guy had written to me online and I had written back and said, "I'm now on hiatus, but we could meet up in a friendly-type way," and he responded and said, among other things, "Hey, wasn't that you at [place X] on Sunday at brunch?" So on this one Sunday morning, 2 months after my arrival, I was sitting in this 50-seat restaurant with one date, just two tables away from another guy who wanted to date me, and was served food by a third guy that my friend was trying to set me up with.
4. Oh, we're still going. My friend G.G., who was until recently a conference friend only but turns out to spend lots of time in Spookytown (on purpose!), said recently, "I should introduce you to some of my friends, I think you'd get along." G.G. is great, the kind of person I love to spend time with and feel comfortable with even though I don't know her all that well, so this boded well for her friends. So the other night we go out with Lieberman, who sounded really cool -- I didn't know what she did for a living, but had seen some of her art photographs, which were quite good. Now Lieberman looks kind of familiar, in a tickling-the-back-of-your-mind kind of way, but I let it go until she turns to me in the middle of dinner and says, "Wait, did you present a paper at the MLA in New York in 2002? I was on your panel!" And in fact, I had sat next to her for a solid hour and a half at that thing, and now remember her and her paper well -- I think it's the change in both hairstyle and glasses that kept me from making the connection. Then at post-dinner drinks, her husband comes in, and looks intensely familiar. But I figure that I'm primed to look for familiarity now, with the Lieberman-MLA thing, so dismiss it. Yet after about twenty minutes he turns to me and says, "I've met you before. Where do I know you from?" We went through all the cities we've been in over the last five years, and all the social gatherings here in Spookytown (for me, that totals 3, so it was pretty easy), but couldn't figure it out. But I definitely know him from somewhere...
5. The last one (for now). About a month ago (maybe a bit more) this handsome Swede writes to me online, seems pretty good in lots of ways, but then ends up writing something kind of stupid. I call him on it, and even though he apologizes things kind of degenerate, and we end up not meeting up. Cut to the other day, when he shows up again in my inbox, saying that he's just moved to HippyDippyville, doesn't know people here, still feels terrible about the whole e-mail thing, wonders if we could meet up in a low-pressure friendly way, as it would be nice to know someone here. This seemed fine to me, so we arranged to meet up for a drink in this nice bar one town over. Assuming he lived close to the metro, I had told him the general area of HippyDippyville where I lived, nothing too recognizable, and when he offered to pick me up (which I would never agree to, of course) he wrote, "We might live closer than you think. Do you know the blinking light at the bottom of [Street X]? I live about a block and a half in." Well, my friends, *I* live on that street, just a block in. And it turns out that he is, in fact, now my next-door neighbor. As in his house is directly behind my house, such that our driveways are adjacent. It's a good thing that we won't be dating, and that he isn't stalkeresque -- he's a good guy, and a cat lover, so now I get to have a friend next door and, once I know him better and trust him, a convenient cat sitter. So that's cheered me up some.
And therein lies my epic tale showing, once again, the world is in fact a quite tiny place. More to come, I'm sure!
posted by Pangea at 5:30 AM
1 Comments:
I just read through the entire dating saga. OK, I've heard it seriatum but ingesting it all at once...I'm exhausted! Your displeasure with Spookytown (I'm not a fan either) makes much more sense. oy.
Post a Comment
<< Home