青い時

They say you have to put a lot of thought into the first few seconds of introducing a character, sort of like how they always say first impressions are so important. For instance, if the character is going to have some major flaw or motto or catchphrase - any recurring feature really - you have to indicate it early on or it'll be awkward bringing it up later. In theory, you should establish the identity of the character and make sure the audience knows all the important things about them within the first thirty seconds of meeting them. But that's not how it works in real life. In real life, you meet someone and, depending on how good they look or what sort of clothes they're wearing, you decide whether they're worth remembering, which determines how much of an effort you're going to invest into scrutinizing the sort of person they are. Then judging by what they say and how they laugh, you make a few assumptions about their sense of humour and character, but just in a broad sense, like a sketch - messy and incomplete. Then as/if you get to know them better, you eventually fill in the blanks with empirical evidence and correct any conclusions that may have gone askew. You can't get to know a person in thirty seconds - it's impossible. And it doesn't help that people guard their actions and words so carefully, mainly because they don't want to give off the wrong impression. You see, the reason people are so careful about how they appear is that they're well aware of that one crucial step - the one where you decide whether someone's worth remembering or not - because that step is the hardest to correct.

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"how can I describe this sensation to you?"
he paused to search himself, rummaging through an assortment of old feelings, dusting them off and holding them up to the light one by one, trying to cobble together a suitable analogy.
"it's a bit like...      being able to understand a language you've never learned...          or being able to recognize a stranger's face without knowing how"