Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Saturday, October 5, 2024

A Smiley Face

I’m not blessed. I didn’t find the image of Mother Mary burned onto my grilled cheese sandwich. Perhaps you recall that story from the early 2000s: a woman from Florida auctioned a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich on eBay, claiming the toasted bread bore the image of the Virgin Mary. The sandwich sold for $28,000.

I’m unable to account for the madness of spending thousands on a decade-old sandwich, but I can explain finding the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich or the likeness of Elvis in a muddy footprint. This is something called “face pareidolia,” and it’s really just our minds perceiving something familiar in lucky, random patterns.

As mentioned earlier, I’m not fortunate enough to find an eBay-worthy Virgin Mary, but I did find a smiley face at the bottom of a jar of hand lotion. I figure that’s about right for a kid from East Helena, Montana. I’ll take it.

A Smiley Face

—Mitchell Hegman

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