Memory: Beliefs about heat

Last night I was washing dishes. I know, it’s a little hard to believe, but I really was. I had a pretty big backlog of them built up (that part is not hard to believe). The water was pretty hot and I semi-burned myself several times. It made me remember a couple other moments from my past that illustrated that all we can really understand is our own perception.

When I was in high school, I remember sitting at lunch with a couple of my schoolmates, two people I had known for a very long time. Even if I didn’t like them all that much, we had always been in roughly the same circle of friends. A boy and a girl. Two of the more outgoing and prideful people in our class. For whatever reason, we were talking about showering. I don’t remember quite what I said, but I remember both of them saying that they liked to take a hot, hot shower. As hot as possible. That they liked for it to burn.

Now, here’s what I knew about myself. I knew that I tended to vary the temperatures I bathed in. That I’d been known to take very cold baths and what I thought were hot showers. Somehow, though, I came away from this conversation thinking of myself as a person who couldn’t stand very hot water.

Well, if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I did not have a lot of women in my life until I was older than most guys. I remember that the first time I took a shower with a woman I set the temperature I felt comfortable with on the dials and asked her how it felt. She told me it was way, way too hot.

Of course, I turned it down. I didn’t narrate the cascade of thoughts that went through my head at that moment for her because no doubt she wouldn’t have been interested (not a time for philosophy), but they went something like this:

Before I asked her, I felt sure she would say it was fine or not hot enough, because I thought of myself as a person who couldn’t take water all that hot.

Then, when she said it was way too hot, I realized that for the first time I was standing side by side with another normal person and that what I perceived as a normal temperature for a shower was too hot for her to handle. That showering was an experience that, up to this point, I had always done completely alone. I had no point of reference for anyone else’s experience in the shower.

So then I thought: maybe I’m a person who takes really hot showers after all?

How would I know without testing the same water alongside someone else?

And then I thought about that conversation in high school. Had the boy or the girl ever had a chance to take a shower with someone else? How would they know what “really hot” to them felt like to anyone else? Did they have one of those really fancy showers that actually told you what the water temperature was objectively? Considering the fact that we were all pretty nerdy, lower-middle-class kids in Kansas, my guess is that that the answer to both of the questions was no.

In fact, since none of us had an objective way of knowing how anyone else would have perceived “hot,” we were each making objective statements about really subjective perceptions. Put another way, what that conversation in high school really illustrated was our own basic assumptions about ourselves.

While growing up, if I had a way of seeing what someone else could do or accomplish, I’d be the first to tell you that I could do it better. No question about that. If I couldn’t see it, though, I tended to assume that I wouldn’t quite measure up.

How hot do I like my showers? No clue what “hot” means, so, I assume: not that hot.

How good of a kisser am I? Never had a kissing contest, so, I assume: not that good.

How well do I see in the dark? Never looked through someone else’s eyes, so, I assume: pretty poorly.

Whereas, the two people I was talking to (and if you knew them, you’d believe this in a second) tended to assume that if they had no way of knowing then they must do whatever it was really well.