As I was leaving a restaurant today, where I had just eaten a very nice lunch, I happened to glance in the mirror. Or at least I thought it was a mirror.
Turns out it was another section of the restaurand that just looked a lot like the one I was currently in. A perfectly understandable error.
Yet that brief moment of confusion, before the situation becams clear, was interesting. For in that moment all sorts of thoughts passed through my head.
My first thought was “Wow, I don’t have a reflection.”
My next thought after that was “Maybe I have somehow become a vampire.”
Then I tried to think back to the night before, for a memory of who might have bit me. After all, reason dictates that such a change would require at least a few hours to take effect.
Then I found myself feeling thankful that I was about to walk out into a cloudy, overcast day. Direct sunlight could be very problematic.
This all happened in about one second. In the next second, it finally dawned on me that I had been positing some very low probability events.
Which is when, tracing backward through my earlier logic, I concluded that the mirror couldn’t have been a mirror at all. And the realization finally hit me that I had been looking into another room.
As you might imagine, I was very relieved by this news.
My favorite response to the realization that one has no reflection is: there is something wrong with the mirror!
https://youtu.be/2xdohwXJ4O0
Have you been rewatching Buffy lately?
I’m always watching Buffy. And so far I haven’t actually turned into a vampire. Then again, I haven’t turned into the Slayer either. Probably just as well.
I imagine you don’t even really need the video streams to watch Buffy by this point. You can just watch in your mind.