DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Last week I had occasion to arrange rendezvous with a number of people I had never previously met. The challenge was to establish a rule for identifying one another without undue stumbling around. It is my opinion that the maximum number of false-positives a reasonable person (such as myself) can tolerate is 1 — and personal comfort requires that the potential for false positives is reduced to near zero.

And yet, how can people identify themselves by description? Think it through… Chances are, the one identifying feature that an unknown party is certain to recognize from 30 feet away is the characteristic you are least likely to call attention to. “I have, ahh, a receding hairline and a huge nose”, I might have said, or “I recently set fire to my eyebrows, so I’ll be the guy with bloodied bandages wrapped around his face.”

All the superficial things polite people are not supposed to notice are precisely the stuff of first impressions. They are, I regret to say, the most certain way to identify an unknown person in an unfamiliar setting. “I can tell from the missing front teeth and the apparent colostomy bag that you are the person I am supposed to meet.”

I was tempted to inject some levity into the process — to tell the people I was arranging to meet “I’ll be the guy in bad sunglasses,” and then show up in an Oakley Overthetop headset, or to say “I’ll have a dark blue suit on,” and wear the suit, but also wear a codpiece the size of a casaba melon. Imagine what would be going through the other guy’s mind: “That must be the guy… Wait, what the hell is that thing on his crotch? Yeesh, tell me this is not the guy..!”

And yet, I did manage to meet a number of parties with minimal confusion. Nobody had to admit to debilitating facial tics, bloating, recent constipation, maxillofacial surgery gone awry, etc. At no point did I and any of my rendezvous mates sit for 20 minutes fifteen feet apart wondering if the other guy is the guy we’ve been waiting for. And at no point did I inadvertently meet someone other than the person for whom I was looking, only to find out later that I’d just spent a half hour with some totally random person who vaguely matched the description I’d been given.

Still, there was always that moment of uncertainty… the moment just after eye contact, when you’re either about to extend hands in greeting, or turn away quickly before the other party wonders if you’re just some loon staring at people as a precursor to a religious or political diatribe or, worse, a sales pitch.