Patterns and Shoes
“Here Link. These are the shoes we got last time.” I pointed to the box with grey and blue tennis shoes. Link was in need of new ones and he’d told me he liked the last pair.
“No. Those are different.” Link said.
“They’re exactly the kind you had before.” I said, looking at the price tag.
“They have a different pattern on them.” Link said. Then he pointed to a pair four boxes over. “These ones are exactly like the ones I have.”
I glanced from one box to the other not seeing differences, then down at Link’s feet where the old pair were in use. It took me a moment to see the slight difference in decorative pattern.
When I examine the shoes, differences are obvious. But I have to be paying attention. Link turned in the store and started pointing.
“There’s a pair like my old ones. And that one. This is the new pattern, and that one and that one.” Often we were standing three to five feet away from the shoes he was pointing out. “Huh. That’s interesting. The old pattern is only in sizes eight to nine. The new pattern is everywhere.”
I looked at the wall of shoes and boxes on either side of the narrow aisle. In less than thirty seconds Link had identified a dozen pairs of shoes by their patterns and noticed a larger pattern in the distribution of the shoes.
I pointed this out to him and made a joke about his “Pattern recognizing brain.” Link smiled, pleased to have an newly discovered super power. We got him the shoes he needed in the new pattern.