I wasn’t even working on evolution yesterday. Yet late at night, with nothing on TV, I started to think a bit more about evolution. It was a nutty problem … waiting at 1:30am for the bathroom, I decided not to loiter outside, but in another room in the dark … because what was the point in turning it on, just to turn it off.
Anyway, my wife got quite a shock (allegedly), when I appeared, not from the Bedroom where you had imagined I was, but from another room.
But why? She knew I had come upstairs, she knew I was the only other person in the house, she knew I’d be waiting and waiting for the bathroom. So, why did she get a fright when I appeared from the “wrong” room?
Clearly she had a mental map of where I was supposed to be, and despite me being not more than 10 feet from where she imagined I was waiting, she got a fright.
It was only a small observation, of an isolated incident, yet it was the answer to a question that had been blocking my understanding of early evolution down the human line.
