“From certain angles it does look like the Virgin Mary,” says acting manager Melanie Todd of Hamburger Mary’s in Ybor City. Yes, it has happened again, and what is it about the West coast of Florida that makes it the epicenter of ‘Virgin Mary’ sightings?
Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague, often random stimulus or an image, which could be perceived as significant to the beholder. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds.
Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a sandwich is just a sandwich but when someone says there’s a face in that sandwich it turns into a gold mine! The lady who bit into her grilled cheese sandwich and then saw a face realized what she had when she took that sandwich and stored it, along with some cotton balls, in a sealable plastic bag.
She put the sandwich up for bids on EBAY and claimed it was 10 years old yet it still looks good. No mold. The bread we keep on the kitchen counter is pardon the expression, toast; after just a few days. Mold in Florida is more ubiquitous than pre-approved credit cards in your mail box.
She must have had a great seal on that plastic sandwich bag. I’m sure that Glad bags or Zip Lock will want to jump on the marketing bandwagon. I could see the commercial now. ‘Technology that will keep your face fresh and crisp for ages’ and the small print on the box, ‘Warning, this is bag is not a toy, do not attempt to cover face, unless that face can be sold on Ebay.’
This latest sighting occurs on a stainless steel wall in Hamburger Mary’s in Ybor City. Some years ago ‘she’ appeared on a glass walled building in Clearwater and attracted 10’s of thousands of people.
What is it about these things that create mass interest? I’m surprised no one has tried to sell the man in the moon. Pretty soon people will see faces in everything and the market will be glutted. The prices will go down and then every legitimate image will be lost in the shuffle. What to do?
I’ll be retiring after I find that yam that looks like Nixon. Although I don’t know how many people will bid on the vegetable.
Let’s help our citrus industry by stamping a face on every grapefruit, lemon, lime, orange and mango. It’ll be a generic face so that everyone will see something of themselves in each image, sort of like 15 minutes of fame except on a personal scale.
Sell each in its own plastic bag packed in cotton balls and everyone will have a souvenir of their visit to the Sunshine State. When you go back up North, you’ll have another reminder of your visit along with that sunburn.
What’s next?
Mohammed in their meatloaf, Buddha in their brownies, Vishnu in their vichyssoise, Pluto in their pancakes, or Moses in their mashed potatoes.
