Face Blindness in Action (RPW 5–rate of perceived whining—aka moderate whine factor in this post)
At the bike shop, where we meet for the indoor bike riding group, one thing that is so annoying and so hard (this might be another reason I skipped three weeks’ of session, in addition to the mind-numbing soul-flattening boredom I experienced in session one): I can’t tell people apart very easily.
Iggy says, when I am trying to figure out, post-op, who a person was, “What kind of bike does she ride?” I never know this either. I bought my bike solely based on one factor: the color. Because the color makes it stand out and easy to locate. (I bought an orange car for the same reason.) Face blind people are notoriously bad at identifying road vehicles (and their owner operators). I guess we’re good in fields, sofas, forests, libraries, and ancient places–zones where transportation is not important.
At the bike shop, the owner/pack leader MC is easy because he acts like the owner/pack leader MC; he has a distinctive voice and a great noggin; he’s super friendly and always really nice to me. (He’s Southern. Love Southern.)
But the rest of the people (all very nice people): they all look like so many other people I may or may not know—it’s just so friggin hard. I’m just never sure who people are, if I know them. (Whining….)
So, I concentrate on the people I do know for certain. Iggy (outing himself as himself by handing me items that belonged to me, and completing a book-sale transaction we’d arranged previously). Spidey. I always know him because he is assembled in the same fashion as a spider. All night I was thinking I was riding next to Spidey (we’d resolved our little wind preferences issue neatly enough) and then I looked down, towards the end of the night, and saw on his trainer the name Pave. Pave is a whole different dude. Pave is not Spidey. I inspected him carefully. Could he be Pave? Or was Spidey borrowing Pave’s trainer? I’d kind of talked to him, but I could really talk to him because I wasn’t sure who he was. At all. If I’d ever seen him before in my life.
So, intrigued by the notion the cyclists were all labelled via their trainers (thanks, Jeff), I looked at all the other trainers, checking the dynamo labels I could see from my station. I was very surprised by some of the things I learned. For example: Vixen Two was one bike over. Really? Couldn’t be her. Vixen Two is blonde, and this woman was brunette-ish. So after many miles of endlessly pedalling nowhere, I got up the courage and I asked her, “Vixen Two, did you dye your hair?”
She had. (Not only do I know her, she’s my—formerly blonde—personal trainer.)
It’s really hard (whine) to sit there not knowing people all evening; I used to never leave my house in the evenings (pity fest, but true). I just stayed home. Freaked out and not up to going out and not-knowing people over and over and over.
Now, I’m trying to sit with not knowing who people are and know this for what it is. I hate it though. I hate how hard it is to connect with people I like so much, I hate that I treat my friends as strangers. I hate it so much. I hate that Spidey/Pave remain phantoms, ideas.
But at home, during the hermit years, it was worse. All I had was myself to not recognize.
Out in the world now….sitting on my bike: oblivious, hopeful, hello.
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It sounds a completely distressing and exhausting condition. Well done for breaking out of hibernation.
ps. thoroughly enjoying Chapter after Chapter. Thank you:-)