Do you ever get that experience where you hear about something (or someone) and you have a hazy idea of who they are. And you hear about something (or someone else) and have a similarly hazy idea.

And you conflate those two things together? Often because of some superficial similarity.

I was always doing this when I was a kid. I know because I remember the sense of surprise to realize two things were different. For example, when I was three or four I definitely used to get mixed up between France, India and America. All of them had a similar synaesthetic feel. They were all foreign countries, indians lived there, and so did the Eiffel Tower.

I distinctly remember the day I looked in a book and suddenly thought "France is a different country from America/India." (America and India themselves took a bit longer because of the obvious "indian" issue) I had a similar conflation of "Romans" and "Germans" two warlike tribes of bad guys rampaging across Europe.

Then later on, I did the same with George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russel (CategoryEarlyTwentiethCentury, CategoryIntellectualGenius, CategorySocialist, CategoryNameBeginsWith_Ber_Sound) and was again astounde (at around the age of 14) to realize that there were two different people.

Today I just found out that I've been doing it again. So congratulations to Bill de hOra and Bill Seitz for finally becoming separated in my mind into two distinct entities.