Seen a Million Faces?

In a recent edition of 'We Defy Augury', our guy Professor G. Truck compares and contrasts the paths taken by two sons of Jersey in an effort to understand and explain the impact of place on literature and art. During a discussion of Jon Bon Jovi's heavily-local lyrics, the Professor references Bon Jovi's smash, "Dead or Alive".

I'm not a big Bon Jovi fan - the whole hair metal thing was never really my bag. But that tune kicks ass, and I love it unironically. There's a lyric that's always resonated with me: "I've seen a million faces. And I've rocked 'em all." Bombastic, braggadocios, and maybe not all that hyperbolic.

Which got me to thinking. I have rocked very few faces. But have I seen a million in my 55 years on the planet?

A few things to consider. I did not spend much time at all in major cities until my early 20s. I lived on small towns and military bases, and we vacationed in places like Cape Cod. Went to a few Red Sox games in that time, and played a bunch of sports, so I wasn't totally isolated. 

But let's assume for the sake of argument that my facecount was pretty low until I turned 25. How many faces per day would I have to have seen to get to a million? There are 10,950 days in 30 years. So over that span, a person would need to average 91 faces a day to get to a million.

In recent years, I probably average fewer faces than that most days. I work from home, so that's a constraining factor. If we don't count Zoom calls, I may not see a face other than my wife's today. Last weekend, which was pretty normal, I'd estimate I saw 200 faces at dinner at a busy spot on Friday, and another 100 at the bar we stopped in to get a nightcap. Then 200 faces at a brewery on Saturday, and another 75 at the restaurant we went to afterwards. Probably at least another 100 at the farmer's market that morning. That's 675 on the weekend, which makes up for the faceless weekdays in terms of the average.

And in the before times, I traveled a decent amount to large cities where it's reasonable to assume I saw a thousand faces a day just by walking around. I worked in Tysons Corner for a decade, and in addition to the faces in my building, I'd usually go out to grab food and see dozens of faces. In my earlier days, Whit and I would spend a not insignificant amount of time in bars in the greater DC area - gotta be several hundred faces per outing. That's before we get to concerts and major sporting events, where a thousand feels low (I'm not counting all the fans in the stands, just the ones I actually saw in person. (In face? Whatever.)

Throwing all that into the mental blender and carrying the one, I'm pretty confident that I've seen a million faces. Now to commence with the rocking.