When my brother and I were young, my parents took us to museums. Often. As art critics and lovers, they would stand in front of just one painting, sometimes for several hours at a time. We would listen to stories they would tell us about an artist or a story surrounding a particular scene, or we’d roam the rooms of paintings on our own. But, eventually, we always ended up on a museum bench, watching the people.

One of our favorite games was to lower our hats over our eyes so that we could only see a person’s feet. Looking at the shoes they wore, we would try to imagine what the person’s face looked like. It was surprising to us how often we were wrong. People, we learned, don’t select shoes to match their faces, and often they don’t even seem to match their personality. […]