“The fish is the last to see the water.” — Anthropologist Ruth Benedict
Our lives are filled with obvious phenomena that sit right in front of our noses (sometimes literally), yet we often miss seeing them at all. I call it Purloined LetterSyndrome, after Edgar Allen Poe’s 1845 short story of that name.
Synopsis: If the letter in question becomes public, tragic consequences could result for the French royal family. The letter is known to have been stolen by a government minister and is believed to be in his home. The police can’t accuse him, for fear the letter would be published, so they’ve made secret searches of his residence, looking in every conceivable hiding place: hollow chair legs, secret panels, the linings of books. It seems everything and everywhere has been checked, without success. Where is it? Spoiler: The story ends with Poe’s detective pointing out that the best hiding place is in full view. Sure enough, that’s where he finds the letter, where any visitor could have seen it, hanging from the fireplace mantelpiece as obvious as obvious could be.
Similarly, obvious, unnoticed facts abound in our everyday lives. Living with them on a day-to-day basis, we may never question them. For example:
Gravity pervades our lives yet we rarely give it a second thought. Notice it now, between your derrière and the chair you’re sitting on.
Our genes trace back to the first life on Earth, nearly 4 billion years ago. That’s the number of seconds in 120 years.
Our bodies are comprised of elements that mostly originated billions of years ago in the fiery hearts of stars, while hydrogen, helium and lithium date back almost to the Big Bang.
Faucets mostly turn on counter-clockwise. A good case can be made that, had civilization arisen in the southern hemisphere, they’d turn on clockwise. (Except that clocks would probably go the other way, messing with the definition of “clockwise.”)
Every breath we take includes molecules from everyone who died more than, say, 100 years ago (to give it time for their breath to mix throughout the atmosphere).
Our seven-day week is artificial — maybe. One theory is that the ancient Babylonians made the connection with seven moving celestial bodies: sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. But some other cultures have weeks ranging from four to 19 days.
The image we have of ourselves, the one in the mirror, is the reverse of how others see us.
Then there’s the weirdness of water, the stuff that comprises about two-thirds of our bodies. Most liquids other than water are composed of essentially discrete molecules, unlike water molecules that are strongly attracted to one another due to their hydrogen bonds. Lacking these bonds, water would be a gas like methane, ammonia, oxygen and carbon monoxide — all of which have about the same molecular weight as water. Fortunately, the bonds aren’t so strong as to make water a solid, unyielding mass, that is, room temperature ice.
Barry Evans (he/him, barryevans9@yahoo.com) invites you to Eureka Books on the July 31 Friday Night Market, where he’ll be signing copies of his new book Amazon to Zodiac.
This article appears in 20 Years at the Playhouse.