I just heard that somewhere else...

Well, the end of wedding season has arrived and I can for the first time in months look forward to a weekend that has not been blocked off on the calendar for months in advance.
Have you ever had it happen that you are introduced to a new word or phrase or place or concept and for the next few weeks it seems to pop up everywhere that you go?
I was chatting with Laura's mom on the weekend and she mentioned that she had seen a picture of Madoc, Ontario on the weather channel and she was commenting how she would never have known where Madoc was if it were not for having met my brother Brian and his family who happen to live there. We thought it very interesting that someone can go their whole life without hearing of something and then it can come up in conversation two days in a row in two very different settings.
I read an article a couple of years ago titled "Oh Captain my Captain"--a reference to "The Dead Poets Society" which I did not understand at the time. This year a friend, Brad, forced me to sit through the movie in order to develop my philosophy of teaching and I discovered that the phrase is a reference to a poem by Walt Whitman. And once again the rule held true. I was watching How I Met Your Mother the following week and of course Barney Stinson stepped up onto his desk and quoted Robin Williams who had quoted Walt Whitman.
In proper nerd form I googled it to gather some context and see if this is something that people other than Laura's Mom and I experience. As it turns out they do and it has its own name. It's called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and it is apparently caused by the human brain in it's endless search for patterns in life.
This is why when you meet someone new you ask where they are from, what they do and who they are related to. That way you can place them in your memory with the appropriate tags so that they can be recalled at a moments notice. It would appear that our mind knows that without context and mental links everything we know would be an inaccessible blob of useless material.
Don't be surprised if in conversation tomorrow someone tries to tell you about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. And you will think of Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, the revolving pistol, West Point, Tom Cruise, Maverick, Barney Stinson, Canucks, Madoc, gold mining, Paul Bunyan, Paul Revere, the New England Patriots, posh finishing schools in Massachusetts, Robin Williams and in turn Mrs. Doubtfire. Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up. I'm just following mental triggers.

Well, I am off to seize the day.

Tot Ziens