The appearance of the mysterious box
FedEx delivered my package to the mailroom. This box is no different from other boxes, with standard specifications, brown, shoe box size cubes. What makes it different from other boxes is the unusual instructions that come with the body of the box - "No opening without permission". To prevent me from having doubts, the four words "not allowed to open" were written conspicuously on the lid in black ink. Following the message prompt in my voicemail, I need to record the process of opening the package at the scheduled time. So, at three o'clock the next afternoon, I took the package to a small room with a camera. Once I entered the room, I pointed the camera at where I stood and opened the package. I walked into the camera's lens range and took a small note from my pocket. A string of phone numbers was written on the note. I entered my phone number into my phone.
"I am Dr. Gosling, please let Gary answer the phone."
"This will help you forward." After the
forwarding, the sound disappeared for the time being.
"I'm Gary."
"I'm Sam, I'm ready."
"Go to go, open the box."
I was finally free to release my Pandora desires, and I tore open the box. "After opening the box, you will see some items belonging to a person," Gary said. "They all come from that person's bathroom." (I noticed that Gary was careful when saying these words and did not disclose the gender of the person.)
"Take these items out one by one," he continued, "and tell me what information these items reveal about the owner."
I moved the items while looking through my hands one by one. A small tube skin cream, a CD about dance music with slight scratches on it, a brown plastic comb and a Polaroid single image photo of the main sink of the shot. When I check each item for clues, I would state my reasoning to the camera. "That's right, the comb is quite large, and the owner may be a male." A Polaroid imaging photo proved my reasoning: there is no aromatic item around the sink, and there are layers of dirt on it; the disorder is more likely to remind people of being a man rather than a female.
I noticed that the hair on the comb is short, straight, and black; the owner may be Asian or Spanish . Judging from the photos, the bathroom sink door is not closed properly and the hair dryer line is not closed properly; the tube skin cream starts from the middle, and not from the bottom, and some hardened residues are still stuck to the lid; the CD is a collection of family music, a typical gay club-related theme; and in addition, the owner pays great attention to his appearance (I am very sure that the owner is a man now), a coherent picture begins to appear.
A few minutes later, Gary asked, "So, what conclusion can you draw through these objects of the owner?" Based on my inspection of these objects, I think the owner is an Asian, in his twenties, under thirty, and he is very likely a homosexual. I underestimated his age, he was in his early thirties, but other inferences were correct. Gary seemed very happy.
What exactly happened? In such a strange situation, I was talking to a person who could not see the expression but could only hear the sound. What am I doing? Why is it me in the vast sea of people? Can I provide him with useful information?
The mysterious character on the other end of the phone is a TV producer planning a new reality show series that will discuss our familiar and almost irresistible human curiosity. If you are like me, when you first enter someone’s living environment, you will be dissatisfied with passive observation of your surroundings. For me, it is too difficult to look around and not collect, filter and process the owner's information. When the owner goes to the bathroom, will I kindly ask for her permission? Of course not! Because she is not here.Let's start, rush to the bookcase and check the books. This is a Madagascar travel guide, this is a mini-gift version of Virginia Woolf [1]'s "A Room of One's Own" (A Room of One's Own), which is very interesting. Let’s look at the photos again. Only one is a personal photo, and the rest are taken by the owner and a large group of friends. Each one can see the drunken joy.
I didn’t have any extra time to stay. I just heard the sound of flushing the toilet in the toilet, as well as the CDs, garbage baskets and garbage piled up on the windowsills, and there was no time to observe. I also have to observe her medicine cabinet when I have the chance. I mean, after obtaining permission to use her bathroom (the medicine cabinet is a very important observation point. I often feel that it would be very interesting if there is a "book of interviewers" in the medicine cabinet that surprises the observers).
