proximoception | (no subject)

Late one night in a grocery store, this was maybe six, eight years ago, the cashier was astonished at me when I spoke to him while checking out. He told me he'd thought I was deaf. I told him I was deaf in my left ear, he must have said something into that one at some point. He looked dissatisfied.

A few weeks later when I came into the store he said there was a deaf man after all, who looked exactly like me. And he was still in the store, he'd just gone toward the back. I was thrilled and ran looking for myself but there was no one in the store, except some slovenly guy who looked nothing like me inspecting eggs. I went back and reported the disappointment and the cashier was puzzled. The man had come into the store just ahead of me and there were no other customers. It wasn't until I'd driven halfway home that I let myself accept that the man who looked nothing like me must be my full deaf double.

And this year we watched Once and I noticed almost at once, with some discomfort, that the male lead looks exactly like me, save for being taller and red-haired and with laudable chin definition--therefore much better-looking. Julie was amazed when I pointed it out, and claims he even wears his jeans the same, and that she was vindicated in thinking I looked like a rock star when she first saw me. Which I don't, but I do look like this musician (therefore undeaf) and actor Irishman. Last week my sister even took some time off from her crisis-ridden new job at the New York Fed to send down a copy of the DVD, having noticed this resemblance independently.

So things can always be better or worse than they are. I guess I'm a middle me.

And how automatically I rejected recognizing the first, how quickly I saw the resemblance with the second.

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Haven't seen Once, but I do love the video for the song.

Laudable chin-definition is quite a phrase. Makes me think of Rock Em Sock Em Robots.

Hello again, me. Absolutely uncanny.

It's actually a lovely movie even if you aren't in it.

But doesn't that suggest a positive self image? It's more complex than that, I suppose, given that I've seen myself both in catalogue models and homely waitresses - and neither one struck me as any more uncanny than the other.

I heard, I think in a psych class, that men looking at themselves in the mirror are likely to overestimate how good they look, while women do the opposite, so that men don't get discouraged from pursuing and women aren't encouraged to hold out for something better too long. I'm wondering if this is some kind of loopy support for that.

Yeah, I've read about that, too. (Not to mention similar (hetero)sex divisions when it comes to male development of the sense of humor over investment in physical beautification, vs. the inverse in women. Which can also loosely coalesce with the mirror assessment theory.) I think it's interesting that my recognition of myself in both beautiful and homely shadows, despite how I'm feeling at the time of identification, suggests, actually, a sense of what I perceive as a consistent variability in my external presentation (like, I am acutely aware of what I think the is the distinct difference between me with styled hair and me bedhead).

Anyhoo.

I wonder if they took that into consideration when they studied it--female participants tend not to beautify when they show up for experiments.