There is a pirate on my bathroom floor.
If you sit on the toilet and look down at your feet, you can see him clearly, a bust portrait, about two inches square, of a bearded man with craggy feautures and a large nose. He's wearing a flamboyantly decorated bicorn hat, and if you study him carefully you can just make out the frilly lace around his collar.
The propensity to see familiar shapes and forms in the random patterns of the world is hardly mine alone; everyone does it, to a greater or lesser degree of awareness. It is a human habit, an ability we share with other predators but take to a much higher level. I believe it is a vestigial survival tool, left over from the dawn of humanity, when the ability to peer into the shadows and determine the difference between a stand of bushes and a pack of wolves was vital to carrying on one's bloodline.
Today that ability is rarely so important, but still present, so the skill has found another outlet: our imaginations. How many of us have lain on our backs and stared up at the clouds and the stars? We see serpents in the swirl of water, beasts with staring eyes in the styling of an automobile, constellations in the night sky, and pirates sketched out in the mottled pattern of the tiles on the bathroom floor.
Mrs. Benson swears there's a parrot on his shoulder, but I don't see it.
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