Baby Got [Behind]

You are standing at a filing cabinet, appearing busy to the unsuspecting passersby, when one of such said passersby—in this case a co-worker—approaches directly to your right. He is standing at attention, staring at the side of your head. The co-worker asks, “Where is that TPS report you were working on?” The report is directly to your left, sitting on a desk. You reply simply, “On the desk behind me.” The co-worker searches dutifully in the direction opposite your backside and finds nothing. “Behind you? I see nothing!”

When used to indicate direction, to whom is the term behind relative?
I’m not exactly sure how, but this orientational paradox came to me, as though in a dream, and I’ve been struggling with it erstwhile. Wisely I harnessed the immaculate power of MS Paint to put together some unsightly illustrations depicting casually conversing people who ended up somehow looking like decapitated snowmen.


The scenario mentioned above can be seen in Figure 1.A:

I would agree with those who say in this instance behind is a poor choice to identify the exact location of the TPS report in relation to Mr. X. Indeed, the predicted outcome would resemble something like what we see in Figure 2.A:

Malaise has occurred because of poor directional clues. Though mildly annoying to Mr. Y, the enigmatic use of the term behind may have, in fact, been a thoughtful gesture.

Why?

It is obvious from Figure 1.A that the term behind in not relative to Mr. X; either he has used this language intentionally, or has suffered from some form of arterial sclerosis. But I digress. If Mr. X was tacitly using ”behind” as being relative to Mr. Y, then it seems less strange. Still a bit of a stretch for you?


Consider the following:
Mr. X and Mr. Y are searching for the TPS report together. So basically the same scenario from before, except the cat, the nonhuman being it is, has no input into instructing anyone about where the report is. In Figure 3.A, Mr. X tells Mr. Y the report is behind the cat, and suddenly the location of the report is obvious. Mr. Y doesn’t look in the direction of the cat’s furry posterior; indeed it is altogether unnecessary.

Why?

Because the term behind now is only relative to the position of the cat to Mr. Y; either because to Mr. Y the cat is little more than an inanimate object that has no clearly defined front or backside (i.e., a box), or—for all intents and purposes—the side of the cat facing Mr. Y temporally becomes its front. Ergo, the side of the cat opposite Mr. Y is the backside, and—therefore—behind the cat.



In certain situations (e.g., Figure 4.A) the communication is direct and very much non-ambiguous; it takes an insignificant amount of effort to decipher the direction to which the speaker refers. However, the same scenario may yield a markedly dissimilar outcome if the term behind is relative to two different parties. As in Figure 5.A, the snake is relative to Mr. Y and Mr. Z in that it is on the opposing side of Mr. X. Although Mr. Y is cruelly whispering to Mr. Z that there is a snake behind Mr. X, Mr. X assumes that the position of the snake is only relative to him, Mr. X, and is bitten on the left ear as a result.


In conclusion, I apologize for this pointlessness and my gratuitous use of the word behind.