February 2000

I used to have hair so short that it almost stood up on my head. It was easy to wash and quick to dry and hassle-free except for the frequent trips to the hairdresser’s. After going every three weeks for six months, Tony and I became friends of sorts. He worked at a one-man salon near my office and getting an appointment was never that hard. Not the talkative type, Tony would fret over every strand until I felt I had a creation where a hat should be. One day I decided to grow my hair out and didn’t see Tony again for six months.

I called the shop after the long absence to get some order back into the shaggy ends. I wasn’t sure if Tony would still be working at the salon, but the receptionist told me no problem – he had an opening that very afternoon. The small shop was deserted when I walked in, a good sign that I would get focused attention for another creation. But Tony was no where to be found.

When I asked the receptionist for Tony, she pointed to the sink area and said, “He’s right there.” I looked over but I could only see a counter, the few chairs and the sinks. No Tony. Confused, I asked where. A voice shot out from the vicinity, “I’m right here!” Still I looked and still no Tony. Where was that voice coming from?

Suddenly, there was a movement. Someone had been standing between the chairs the whole time. I hadn’t “seen” this person because it wasn’t the Tony I expected. In the six months between my last and present visit, Tony had become Tonia. He was now a full-bodied she with a dress and chest to match.

By any of his names, T’s hairdressing skills were just as good as ever. And so I walked out an hour later with another winning do. But I was dazed for the rest of the day, and not with T’s changes, because living in New York City, haven’t we seen it all? I was amazed because I had not seen T – even when he was standing in full view – simply because I had not expected to see a woman. It was the most powerful proof I had ever experienced of how the mind controls what we “see.” Or, in this case, what we do not see.

I once read a story by a Korean-American writer who was adopted at birth along with her one year old brother. She described the experience of being raised in a small American town by white parents. In an attempt to protect her and her brother from feeling different, her parents never told them that they were adopted. They never told them that they were of Korean descent.

She described the first time she waited for the school bus with her brother at the age of five. As the bus pulled up, she remembered how the kids looking out the windows taunted them for being “slanty-eyed.” She looked around her in bewilderment and asked her brother who the kids were making fun of. “Who is slanty-eyed?” she asked. Her brother answered, “I think they are talking about us.” This experience was to remain fixed in her memory as the moment she realized that she was different.

When I read this story I found it hard to believe that in all her early years, she had not seen that she was not the same just by looking in the mirror. But her mind had not trained her to look for a different race, so she simply saw different features. She had not seen because she had not known.

Recently I had a chance to experience a part of me that I didn’t know existed. We all have quirks and habits that are so much a part of us that we don’t even notice they exist. How many times have you told a friend, “But I don’t do that!”

Some of them are cute like the way a friend I know grins when he knows he’s stretching the truth. Some are harmless like the “eh?” my Canadian sister-in-law adds to the end of every sentence. There are others, however, that can be hurtful – no matter how unknowing.

My friend’s wife finishes his sentences whenever I try to talk to him. She’s not aware that she’s doing it. The one time I pointed it out to her, she became angry. So I’ve learned to talk to him by phone, or meet him for coffee alone. Sometimes I have wondered, is there something about me that I’m equally blind to, but is as hurtful?

There is a multi-billion dollar industry based on helping us package the person we want to present to the world. Cosmetics and styling and even a color chart that can match your skin tone for maximum appeal. A mirror shows us what others see, but where to go to check on those parts that we can’t see because we don’t know they are there?

I once read a book that claimed the people we attract into our lives are the ones most like us. If that is the case then perhaps they can be our mirrors. If that is the case then perhaps by observing their behavior, especially what most irritates us, we can see a part of us that is the same.

Remember, if you don’t believe it’s there, you can’t see it. So turn it upside-down; believe first, then you’ll see. Tell me if you discover a new race.