On Strange Occurrences

One of the more peculiar things I’ve run into in my time begins with an Asian man showing up for one of my dinghy sailing lessons wearing complete formal attire. He arrived at the lesson in full yet awkward strides, speaking almost no English whatsoever, vocally out of focus in the city. Now, a well-dressed Asian man fits in almost anyplace in the world (in the aesthetic sense, if nothing more) yet here in my sailing lesson was where I had least expected one to show up. One certainly has no need for dress shoes and black socks in a boat that is more likely than not to tip over when you step inside. Furthermore, I know he wasn’t going for the aesthetic sense of his being there because the lighting wasn’t right, something any aesthete would have recognized immediately. I never did figure out exactly why he wore that suit to my sailing lesson. It could have been culture clash, I suppose, or maybe just downright silliness. In retrospect, though, I see that he probably just wanted to be treated with a little bit more respect. Maybe people were rude to him when he wore his flower shorts and baseball cap, maybe he could only command attention while wearing a tie.

The next person to show up was Spanish, or Guatemalan perhaps. A sailing instructor’s worst nightmare is when none of his students speak English, and so far I was two for two. Not only could they not understand me, however, they couldn’t understand each other either! Therefore, they impressed me when they decided to share a quarter-operated locker in which to store their things. (I doubt anyone at the big UN gatherings is this nice. I can’t imagine Russia ever sharing a locker with France, for instance.) This brings us to that peculiar occurrence I hinted at previously. I proceeded to observe two grown men who didn’t speak any of the same languages spending fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to work an American quarter-operated locker with very poorly written English instructions. Peculiar is really the only word for it.

Watching the two communicate with each other fascinated me. Two human creatures, brimming with unsurmountable intelligence, yet so linguistically isolated from one another, attempting to unlock this simple metal door. They first tried speaking in their native languages, which failed horribly, Spanish not remotely resembling Chinese. They then resorted to a combination of crippled English and lots of pointing for a little while, which helped somewhat, but the locker ended up eating a few of their quarters in the process. After that each of them in turn looked up at me for assistance, but I was left speechless. Here struggled two adults who probably could have educated me thoroughly on microscopic computational processing systems or gauge theory, and they were looking to me, an eighteen-year-old, for advice on how to open a quarter-operated locker.

Although I could argue much for the importance of always being aware of the present moment and exactly what is happening, it’s sometimes best to not completely analyze what’s going on just so that you don’t start laughing at exactly the wrong moment. And somehow watching two adults ten years my elder puzzle over a quarter-operated locker seemed exactly the wrong moment to laugh, especially when they were both staring at me and one of them was wearing a suit. When something like that occurs, it becomes necessary to take all the facts and store them away in your memory for later comic relief, and then try to only see the situation of the moment from a serious point of view. Of course, no matter how much I attempted to retain my poker face, I could not provide much help to two people who didn’t speak my language without at least giggling, and so I let them be and let the nature of human creativity run its course.

In my opinion, the one creepy thing that is alright to do is to look deep into someone’s eyes for a couple seconds and then try to imagine exactly what that person is thinking. I bet that the characters in my story, when trying to communicate with each other, experienced a feeling immensely similar to that which the earliest of humankind experienced when developing the first spoken languages. How frustrating to have an idea and be unable to express it! These two foreigners were reenacting the initial motions of humankind towards solving complex problems, and there I was witnessing it. How peculiar indeed!

People tend to understand one another best when in close proximity. Two foreigners to each other have at least half a chance of solving a problem when in the same room and given the opportunity to interact; however, they would have almost null chance were they solely able to communicate over the telephone, for example. It also helps when neither of the parties involved in the problem-solving situation will admit defeat; it forces them to think of some possible solution, no matter how long it takes, for who would give up so easily upon the task of opening the door to a coin-operated locker? And so after much trial and error; much isolation of variables such as when to insert the quarter, when to open the door, when to turn the key; many futile hand gestures and signals to each other; yet effectively after having not spoken a word to each other, the pair eventually opened the locker door, and a wave of relief and triumph passed over the three of us.

What I’ve noted from this situation is how remarkably the scenario seemed to represent every human conquest towards progress, every success, every giant step, every breath of satisfaction. The journey of two complete strangers unlocking the secrets that differentiated them and the secrets that made them similar, the agreement upon a goal, the blatant yet irrational first attempts to open the locker door, the analysis of the situation, the regard for the barriers of understanding and perception, the careful experimentation, the methodology of the techniques employed, it seems so eerily brilliant how such a simple and peculiar situation can represent in a matter of minutes the complete evolution of human creativity and logical problem-solving in our world. And so, I’ve realized that as soon as you start looking in just the right way, everything in the world suddenly becomes symbolic and aesthetic, and often the most peculiar occurrences take on the most oddly profound meanings.