UnexpectedInsights

The other day, I was listening to Radiolab, in particular to You Are Here and had one of those moments of sudden epiphany. The world changed a bit.

You see, I always thought that those moments, the moments when you are are in some familiar environment, you stop paying attention for some reason, and then you have no idea where you are? I thought they were kind of like the moments when you get up to go get something, get to the correct room, and realize you have no idea what you got up for. That happens to everybody, right? Well, apparently these things are not the same. Apparently some people go their entire lives without ever losing track of where they are, not knowing which way to turn to get home, being lost in a familiar place. Who knew?

Clearly, I don't get lost that way as often as the woman in the radio show. It's rare that I get completely unmoored and have to keep going in the direction I was headed in until either things look familiar or I reason out which way I need to go. It is, I have to admit, memorably distressing when it happens when I am not headed in a particular direction; walking out of the back door of University Hall at Ohio State one day I lost my place, and it is not a revealing place to be. I had to walk around the building until I got to the front before I had any idea where I was in any useful sense. (Around is safer than through; buildings are almost always more confusing on the inside.)

Normality is such an elusive concept.