How Face Blindness Is Going
It’s always interesting. Yesterday, a man got out of his car and told me straight out who he was. My department chair! “Thanks,” I said. “For the information.” Then I asked him how he knew I didn’t know. He doesn’t introduce himself in the building. Usually, I think I recognize him in the building, at least when he is on the third floor, in striking range of his office, the conference room. “I’m in sunglasses, hair cut, getting out of a car, in shorts, on a street in summer.” Wow, I thought. Really perceptive. Really helpful.
With face blindness, you don’t really know who you know, when you are going to not know, and it’s the intermittentness that makes the disorder so challenging. All day every day I see people and run through a little list, automatically–that’s a Kate, no, could be Dee, no, no is it Corrie? no….but it could be Grace….no…she’s walking on by. It’s actually quite a lot of work to not know this often, this much!
But I am getting used to it. And it’s getting easier to say: “Hi, I’m Heather, do I know you?” I’m not feeling so crazy about it, so stresesd and tense and forgetful and rude and peculiar. I’m feeling a little more like me. Face blindness is going……okay.
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Thanks for the update, Heather. It’s an amazing subject. Can’t wait to read your memoir.