These days we spend much of our time wearing masks, but strangely, we don’t seem to have trouble recognising each other in public.
I go to the shops with most of my face hidden and friends greet me as usual, “Hi David,” and I reply, “Hi André,” or “Hello Dawne,“or whatever, without a problem even though all I can see are spectacles and a hat.
What is it that makes each of us recognisable when our faces are hidden?
I am reminded of a little joke about a penguin who walks into a bar and asks: “Has anyone seen my brother?”
And the barman replies, “I don’t know. What’s he look like?”
The point is that to human eyes all penguins look identical, but to a penguin each penguin probably has a distinctive look.
Maybe to a penguin’s eyes all humans are identical.
We all carry identity documents bearing photographs of our faces.
That’s how we identify each other officially — shape of nose, ears, hairline, moustache and so on.
But hide all that behind a mask our friends have no problem with our identity.
“Hello Dave,” “Hi Anton.” I suspect we must each have a distinctive aura of some kind that makes every one of us unique.
I often see it in animals and birds. A flock of cormorants may look identical to us, but there’s always that boss cormorant who is allowed to perch on the highest point of the rock.
All the others recognise him as the leader.
I have two cats that share my garden with a family of rock doves.
I toss out scraps of bread for the doves each evening and
Phiphi the cat tries to sneak up on them, hiding behind flower pots and creeping through bushes.
She has never succeeded in catching one because they watch her and take off into the air in good time.
Lucy, the other cat, isn’t interested in doves and often lies among the breadcrumbs while the doves peck all around her, sometimes even hopping over her to get to a tasty snack.
They obviously recognise Lucy as a friend and Phiphi as a threat. Does Phiphi have an evil aura?
Friends who live on the water’s edge in Marina da Gama are visited each evening by a flock of coots.
Now if there’s any distinguishing feature that marks one coot from another I certainly can’t see it.
But there are two particular coots that have exclusive rights to a little floating island of weeds and all the rest respect their ownership.
If we could find a way to record our auras, rather than our features, we’d probably have a far easier way of detecting and punishing criminals and maybe even corrupt politicians.
Last Laugh
The proud mother of a newborn baby said to the doctor, “Look, he’s the absolute image of his father.
“Don’t worry,” said the doctor, “just so long as he’s healthy.”
* "Tavern of the Seas" is a column written in the Cape Argus by David Biggs. Biggs can be contacted at [email protected]
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Cape Argus