Life — March 13, 1931 — page 6: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of "I've Seen You Somewhere" This page presents a short story illustrated with a single photograph. The narrative depicts a chance encounter between a man in a red swimming suit and a woman in a blue suit who meet on a Pacific Ocean raft. Each claims to recognize the other from somewhere. The story humorously traces their failed attempts to place each other through various locations: California, college, a club tournament, Kansas City, Seattle, a cruise to the West Indies, and Fort Worth. Despite multiple shared reference points across different settings and social contexts, neither can definitively identify where they've met. The accompanying photograph shows two figures on what appears to be a raft, illustrating the story's opening premise. The humor derives from the common social awkwardness of partial recognition and the increasingly absurd accumulation of potential meeting places.