When brain science embarrasses you

This morning, while out at the barn, my phone rang. Since it takes a while to find the phone under my coat and grab off a glove in order to answer it, I missed the call. I noticed it was from our local library, so didn't worry about it too much. I was also pretty sure I knew what it was about. All of our current library books were originally placed on hold since the library isn't open to patrons. One of these books came home but was never actually checked out, so the library system thought it was still waiting for me on the hold shelf. If a book is not collected from the hold shelf in five days, it is returned. I was pretty sure this was the library telling me that this book was going to be returned if I didn't come get it, even though I already had it. I had mentioned it to D. a couple of days ago, but figured he had forgotten to check on it.

I decided I would save D. the effort and just call and have someone take care of it, so after another cup of coffee after coming in from the barn, this is just what I did. I called, someone answered, and I went into my somewhat long explanation of why I was calling and what I needed them to do. I finished up by saying that I had asked D. to take care of it, but he must have forgotten. It is at this moment that the person I'm talking to raises his voice and practically shouts, "Mother! This is D.!" 

It is amazing how many thoughts can flit through you head in the fraction of a second. At first I was a little annoyed because I couldn't figure out why this library worker was shouting at me. As the words suddenly started to make sense, I was confused because I thought D. was at home, which explains why my next question was, "D., aren't you at home in bed?" I'm pretty sure D.'s response was an exasperated mention of it being Thursday, he works on Thursday mornings, and since he was talking on the phone from the library, he obviously wasn't home and in bed. He then said he would take care of the book issue and we said good-by. After I hung up I started to laugh hilariously because the whole thing was so funny. 

I was so convinced D. was home that I didn't recognize his voice. I wasn't expecting to talk to him, and so it didn't even occur to me to think it was him. Yes, it was Thursday, but really, who knows what day it is anymore? Clearly I don't. Plus, if my high school seniors don't have anywhere to be, it is rare to see them up and about first thing in the morning. It was not unreasonable to think D. was in bed. My expectations totally colored how I interpreted the voice on the other end of the phone.

And this is the brain science part. We have so much information coming at us all the time, that our brains are made to choose what we pay attention to. If there is something out there that we have selected not to pay attention to, it is virtually invisible to us... or we don't recognize our own child's voice. Don't believe me? Watch this video. It is going to instruct you to count the number of times the people in white shirts pass the ball. Go ahead, click on it and count. It's only about a minute long. I'll wait. (And if you've done this, don't give away the answer of the number of passes.)

Did you count? 

I'm going to skip down a few spaces to make sure no one accidentally sees the answer before they've tried the test. 

Did you see the gorilla? Researchers learned that about half the people who did the test were so focused on counting the passes that they didn't see the gorilla walk through. It seems crazy, but it's true. This experiment has been around for a while, but it shows that what we expect to see really does color what we actually experience. If we do not expect to see a gorilla and are focused on something else, we don't see a gorilla. If we really think our son is in bed, we don't hear his voice on the other end of the line. Brains are weird... and sometimes embarrassing.