You See What You Look For

When we got our first Jeep back in 1998, I immediately noticed how many Jeeps were on the road. Clearly, they didn't suddenly materialize on the road the day after we got ours; they were there all along and I just never noticed before. The same thing happened when we upgraded Jeeps a few years later (interestingly, the opposite happened back in December when we traded the Jeep in on a Pacifica - we saw them all over the place before, but seemingly not so much now).

I was waiting to fly out from Fort Wayne last Tuesday when I saw (at a distance, and from behind) someone who looked so much like a co-worker I wanted to call out his name just to check. Maybe that put me in the appropriate frame of mind, because over the next several hours and two airports, I saw dead ringers for the following people:

• My sister who lives in San Francisco (ironically, boarding a flight to SFO)
• Amber from Survivor
• Two other co-workers
• Ronnie Lott
• Caroline Kennedy (at age 21)

The kicker? I found out when I got back that the guy who started me down this path was indeed the co-worker I thought he might have been. There's probably some psychological theory that can neatly explain all of this.