Sight Unseen

"People do not see that at which they look."

Professor Emile had just projected a series of ten young female nudes upon the screen. Asking us to study them carefully, he'd left each enlarged photograph on display for three minutes, treating us, for half an hour, to these magnificent images of feminine pulchritude.

"You'd be surprised at how much a person, in looking, overlooks," he contended now, as he distributed a timed multiple-choice quiz, consisting of ten questions, each of which was worth a possible ten points, concerning the last image he'd projected onto the screen, the one he'd just clicked past so that, now, a redheaded young woman was displayed in place of the blonde whose photograph had occupied the place of honor a mere few moments ago. We'd have five minutes to complete the quiz, he informed us, whereupon he'd call "Time!" and we were to set our pencils aside.

I wrote my name, "Arthur Huggins," in the quiz's upper left corner and smiled as I read the first question: "What color is the model's hair?" There were four choices, identified by the letters "A" through "D": "Black," "Blonde," "Brown," and "Red," respectively. What an absurdly simple quiz! I thought

I circled "B" and read the second question: "What color are the clouds?" Clouds? Who the hell had been worried about clouds when a naked woman filled up a screen ten feet tall by six feet wide? I studied the choices: "A. Black. B. Pink. C. White. D. Yellow." Fuck! I couldn't even remember whether there had been any clouds, but, apparently, there had been, because the "D" distracter didn't exclude them with a "None of the above" option. My pen, poised over "A," hesitated, wavered. Inwardly, I shrugged, circling "C" as the most likely possibility.

The third question was even harder: "For the sake of contrast, the model is placed beside which texture?" None of the four choices stood out, but I had to decide among these alternatives: "A.