A Little Adventure With My Subconscious Mind

Yesterday I saw a somewhat famous person, who I've seen before on the Net, on TV–an amazing guy, dubbed "The Human Calculator"–but couldn't remember his name. I had no recollection whatsoever of the name. It really felt impossible to recall this name without googling it.

So, I wanted to see if I could dig it up from the subconscious mind, as we know that sometimes things like this just spring to mind without us even thinking about it. So I kind of started going, ‘Come on, Mind! What's that name?!!’

I calmed back down. A few minutes passed. I started getting a name in my head: "Scott". I wasn't sure if that was indeed the name, but somehow felt surer and surer after a short while so I locked it in.

Now, just left with getting his last name, it really felt unlikely that I would get it without Google's help. However "F" shortly came to mind. ‘Scott Forstall?’ I thought to myself. ‘Nah, that's the guy at Apple, silly! ;-P’ But "F" sure felt like something. So I sat on it a little longer. Same thing happened with earlier–somehow I felt more and more certain with "F" after a few minutes. Then it dawned on me–I got excited: ‘oh my god, its starts with “FL”! I can feel it coming back to me!!’

‘“FL…” “FL…” “Flanigan”?!’ I kept pondering and ruminating until I finally ran out of patience. I fired up Google and typed 'Scott Flanigan' in. The result came up and alas, it wasn't the person I was looking for.

Disappointed but still somewhat convinced, I backspaced a few characters. As I backspaced slowly, Google Instant search kicked in. When I got to "Scott Flan..." there it was–the results popped up with the name of the individual I was looking for, "Scott Flansburg”.