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I spent my life trying not to be careless

28 July 2008 21:50

There should be a word for those silly little ways you can fool your body & brain. For example recently I've been having trouble with my boiler - so getting hot water is a challenge.

I find myself doing the crazy thing:

  • Turn on hot tap(s)
  • Stick my hands under them to see if the water is hot.
  • Think to myself "Hey it is getting warmer..".
  • Realise actually I just imagined it.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Similarly there are times when you can imaging all kinds of bodily sensations. More than once I've been walking out, or sat at home, convinced that my mobile phone vibrated in my pocket. And it hadn't at all.

I remember, random, conversations with people who agreed they sometimes believe their phones are vibrating when they are not. Seems to be a common thing.

Which begs the question, is this a modern thing? Ten years ago if you had something vibrating against your body you damn well knew about it ... because you were doing it deliberately!

It is only recently that it was possible to have something semi-randomly vibrating against you, without your explicit control. Right?

(OK that sounds rude. It'll be our little secret.)

ObQuote: Godfather (Pt.1)

Tags: life, random | 4 comments

 

Comments on this entry

icon Nils R Grotnes at 18:21 on 28 July 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question *cough* I don't usually reply just for silly little things like this, but with that title I just couldn't help it... ;-)
icon Faiyaz Ahmed at 20:09 on 28 July 2008
10 years ago I'd swat furiously at bugs I thought had crawled up my trousers or shirt. Sometimes I was right, but, more often than not, I was painfully wrong. The possible reason for the sensation may be wrong, but 10 years later, I have a new reason to check.
icon Thomas Koch at 06:25 on 29 July 2008
The human body can not feel absolute temperature, but only the difference between the body temperature and the temperature of a touched object. So what you were feeling may have been, that the difference in temperature between your hand and the water decreased, which may have actually been that your hand was getting colder. :-)
icon Alex at 01:05 on 30 July 2008
I think you're slowly losing that limited stash of things they called marbles. Personally I lost all of mine a long time ago, so welcome to the club. It's very exclusive!
RandomQuote: "Is that an iPhone 3G in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?! Mmm vibrate."

 

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