What are the chances? There are about a third of a billion people in the U.S., and two of us see the same person \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a stranger \u00e2\u20ac\u201d twice, though we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re hundreds of miles away?<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too much of a coincidence, but stay with me and help me unravel this sighting matter.<\/p>\n
A while back, on the first Rail Runner trip for most of us, my family and I drove to Santa Fe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s South Capital Station to board the train for Albuquerque. There, I saw a man I swore had donned a half cantaloupe as a way of keeping cool.<\/p>\n
The tam, sans<\/em> brim, simply sat roundly on the elderly man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head. It had the texture and color of a melon; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s as if he cut a large melon in two, scooped out the guts and placed the remains of the half sphere atop his head. Naturally, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hesitate to photograph him; I figured that anyone who chooses to dress like that couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t claim invasion of privacy. So I clicked away.<\/p>\n In the preview feature of my camera, I showed members of my family what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen and shot, and they all agreed it indeed looked like the man was sporting the juicy fruit on his head. Had his mother taught him to cover his head as a way of avoiding contracting the dreaded skin disease, mel<\/em>anoma?<\/p>\n I e-mailed the image to other members of my family, and the following day, I received a photo from my son Stan, from Denmark. He and his family had spent a couple of weeks in New Mexico and had left for home only the day before. While waiting for overseas connections, my son noticed a man wearing a cantaloupe hat as they waited for a flight in the Atlanta airport. It might have been the same flight, to Copenhagen, that Stan took.<\/p>\n As soon as he received the photo I took, Stan placed the images side by side, scratched his head and sent me the picture he had taken. Without being melo<\/em>dramatic, I swore the melon wearers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the one in Santa Fe and the one in Atlanta \u00e2\u20ac\u201d had to have been one and the same. Both appear to be tall, in good shape, gray and balding and have fair skin. What are the chances? The resemblance is dismaying, the only difference \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and it could be a big difference \u00e2\u20ac\u201d was in the wristwatch: in my photo, the band is leather; in Stan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s photo, it is metal.<\/p>\n The hat is the first of its kind I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen. Up close, I realized that our Santa Fe traveler was indeed wearing some kind of fabric, lest every fly and gnat in the area would arrive for the buffet. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible the hat is among the latest styles, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been too far out of touch to see one.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the same man. Could be his brother. Or maybe those photographed are among millions of elderly, graying, balding, stylish hombres who like to try something new. But still, but still … how do we explain the other coincidence: the fact that both father and son thought of taking pictures of someone wearing the melon fedora? Stan and I were hundreds of miles apart when he took the pictures.<\/p>\n When I explained this coincidence to fellow Optic columnist Lupita Gonzales, she said simply, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That proves the fruit doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fall far from the tree.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure she intended the analogy to mean that my son and I have quite similar photographic tastes (or hangups).<\/p>\n But the fruity part: that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more complicated, a real mel<\/em>ange of ideas. I think we already established that the hats are made of some kind of fabric, not a fruit, certainly not cantaloupe. So in her mel<\/em>ancholy way, Lupita needs to search for a more apt metaphor.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, under the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153M\u00e2\u20ac\u009d section of her dictionary, she came up with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mel<\/em>anochroi,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d defined as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153caucasian having fair skin and dark hair.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ya think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What are the chances? There are about a third of a billion people in the U.S., and two of us see the same person \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a stranger \u00e2\u20ac\u201d twice, though we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re hundreds of miles away? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too much of a coincidence, but stay with me and help me unravel this sighting matter. A while back, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}