087. ...waggling my eyebrows or gyrating...
(afternoon thinking)
Am I wearing a hat?
Sometimes I can have a nice few minutes sitting quietly in a room looking ahead nowhere in particular, toward a wall maybe, and try to tell, just by using my skin, whether or not I'm wearing a hat.
Just skin and intuition. Simple as that.
This is one of those times.
I'll not have much to go on. I will have been wearing a hat very recently. That's almost a given.
My hats are quite small, no wide brims so no visual clues available at the top edge of my peripheral vision.
My hats don't smell so that's out.
It's all touch and whatever clues I can detect in the room around me.
"Is my head warm?" I'll think. And maybe it is and maybe it isn't and I'll have to think, is that because the room's warm or because I am? Is my head the kind of warm that might suggest a hat?
Or I'll glance around the room looking at curtains or candles, or whatever, for any signs of a wafty draft or breeze that I'd feel if I were hatless. I'll have a visual sleuth about is what I'm saying.
The whole time I'm processing and cogitating I'll be thinking about waggling my eyebrows or gyrating my jaw in a way that would move my scalp and perhaps give away the hat status up above. I can be very disciplined though. Only when I've exhausted all the other opportunities for hat detection will I engage the scalp, activate the facial muscles.
I'm like a lion and the "is there a hat on my head?" question is a gazelle. I started out in the bushes some distance away, scenting the air, casting about for atmospheric clues, and now I'm getting in close. I'm sneaking up through the tall grass now. Jaw goes side to side. Any sign of a hat? Nothing conclusive. Ok then, eyebrow raise. Nope, still can't tell.
If there's a hat up there it's been on all day and any sensations it's causing have been assimilated into the general perceptual cloud of feelings I identify as my self so I have to really pay close attention.
The eyebrow raise is the last test. At this point in the lion/gazelle analogy, if it were an Attenburgh, you'd be getting a close up of a poised paw held just off the ground. The paw lowers to the ground. Hind legs tense up ready for the last killer pounce.
It’s 2C on doctor Eckman's Facial Action Coding System. The outer brow raise.
That's the big one for hat detection. If it turns up nothing then we're in the end game.
I'm thinking, "ok, it's all inconclusive, I don't know whether I'm wearing a hat, nothing left for it but to put my hand up and touch my head". The final gambit.
End game.
To keep the lion/gazelle thing going I should move quick as a flash at this point - it would be pounce time - but the analogy falls apart because I like to go slow and tease the moment out.
I'll raise my hand like I'm doing the slowest ever salute. A real wise ass soldier taking the piss out of his drill sergeant with a subtlety that would make his impertinence difficult to legitimately punish. My hand goes up at the pace of a Sainsbury's delivery van tailgate. I don't know if you've ever stopped to watch them. It's really slow. I imagine it's infuriating when you're on a tight schedule or have an after work engagement.
Only when I've raised my hand up past my eyebrows, and I'm in danger of losing visual lock on the investigative fingers, will I change direction, pull in laterally and touch my head.
Hmm. No hat. I must have taken it off as I came in. Oh yeah, yup. There it is on the corner of the bed. Missed it on the initial sweep.
Good. Well. I think that goes to show that I'm writing this stuff just for me because no one in the history of ever has thought, “I wish Lambie would write a wee something something about whether or not he's wearing a hat.
I had fun writing though and when, in the end, I realised that my hat was right there on the corner of the bed the whole time, I did a genuine wee laugh out loud. That probably added ten minutes to my life.
I hope you have a wee LOL at something silly today.
Thanks for your time.
Paul.
If you haven't already you could consider subscribing. Each time someone does I get a little notification email and I imagine the happy giddy feeling has similar lifespan extending properties as a wee LOL.
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