Thinking About Thinking

• What makes us want to crawl inside someone else's head and try to figure out what they're thinking? Do we want to know what they think of us? Is it because we're interested to hear what's weighing the most heavily on others' minds? Is it that we'd like to have the upper hand in negotioations? Are we looking for clues to help us interact with one another? It's all of those reasons and more, I'm quite sure. So what if there were no secrets... no veiled thoughts? What if we all wore little cartoon bubbles on top of our heads that constantly scrolled our thoughts across a continuosly updated ticker? (In full-color HD for the brightest, clearest thoughts you've ever read.) Would the world be a better place? Or worse? I think we'd get used to it eventually. I could just look at your ticker and know what you're thinking. But I'd better be careful, because you'd be reading my ticker, too.
  
  
• Jess and I were at this little burger joint called Snoop's tonight, and we were noticing all of the clues that pointed to the building's former life. A well-worn and uneven tile floor... unused recessed lighting above the front windows... those charming old tin ceiling tiles... everything pointed to a time when this place wasn't a burger joint. So I told Jess to make up a past for the building, and I'd do the same. She laughed it off, but I'll bet she has an idea. As for me... at first I said drug store, but now I'm guessing hardware. There was the footprint of an old counter area up front, the lighting could have been used for window displays, and it was a long way up to those tin ceiling tiles. I can just picture row upon row of little bins along one wall, with an old rolling ladder for easy access.
  
  
• I think grocery store checkout clerks have probably the best insight into our daily lives. For one, they see us all the time. They know how and when we come and go... whether we stop by after work or we're always showing up in sweats and a baseball cap. They know what we eat. They know if we have kids... and they can probably tell how well we're raising those kids. In most cases, they know if we're married. If they load our groceries for us, then they see what kind of car we drive. And if they're astute enough, they'll make an educated guess as to how much money we make. I wonder how many checkout clerks read the clues... and what they can infer from single (or, in most cases, multiple) encounters with their customers. How much do they know about each one of us? And wasn't there a time when we expected them to?