About a Costa Rican

People have told me that I tend to talk a lot about myself. No more. This begins my series on people who are not me. Considering my readership, I doubt anyone's privacy will be violated, but I can always remove things if they are not liked by the subject matter, as I am hoping my readership will double by the subject matter actually reading their entry.

Cesar is Costa Rican, and patriotic enough to insist that America should not refer exclusively to the United States, but not enough to believe the country is perfect (too touristic for the Americans. Wait, I mean, "residents of the USA"). He speaks English well and slowly. I thought this was a result of English being a second language, but Spanish-speakers have told me he speaks Spanish the same way. English is just one of the many things he does causally well. He is the same with cooking, art-work, or brewing beer. He never seem strain himself, but the end results of most everything he does is good. Surprisingly good, because I always underestimate him.

This is posed. We never actually hugged. Perhaps due to the underestimating.

Confirmation bias is a psychological phenomenon where you remember and process only things that fit with your preconceived biases. For example, if you are convinced that someone dislikes you, you notice, remember, and angst when they don’t make eye-contact, when they are quiet, or slightly curt. When they are friendly, you attribute it to the nice weather, and forget about it.

I bring this up because Cesar being a Gerber baby, as he claims, completely fits my confirmation bias of him as an over-grown baby. That’s not meant as an insult. He’s a baby in the best way: adorable, present-orientated, beloved by all except the heartless. 26 years have done nothing to thin out his cherubic face or diminished his dimpled smile, and he still has the benevolent air of a well-fed baby who knows he’s really in charge.

The former Gerber baby is on the left.

Likewise, I can easily believe that he was stolen as a baby by a monkey up a tree, as he also claims. In my imagination, he’s completely calm and cheery through out the whole ordeal, while increasingly frantic audience mills around below the palm tree. If it’s not true, it should be. Perhaps I feel this way because I first meet him on a ski trip where he ended up skiing serenely backwards throughout our entire beginners ski lesson. Nobody understood how he managed it.

 

Sometimes, he didn't manage.