If I know you, and one day I walk past you on the street unexpectedly, there is a very high chance I am going to come off as a Grade-A bitch, totally ignoring your, or else staring at you like I have no idea who this freak is, coming up to me like they've known me for years. Not because I *am* a Grade-A bitch (I hope!), but because I am face blind. Mildly, anyway. I am not a hopeless case; I just have an incredibly poor memory for faces. AKA, I have Prosopagnosia. I am pretty sure I have the genetic kind, because I am firmly in denial that I am brain damaged. :p Also, because my sister has it, a little worse than me. And I have my suspicions about ds, too. Poor kid.
I never realized not everyone was like this; I thought it was NORMAL to not know who someone was if they weren't in their normal setting, their
normal context! How odd. Anyway, like I said, I have a MILD case...I can recognize most people I know, most of the time. If I know them. If I see you every week at the supermarket, and then I see you two towns away, in someone's house, I MIGHT think you look familiar, but I probably will never place why..unless you triggered one of my coping mechanisms, and said something that I could place...or if you are very distinctive in some way...or if your voice has a pattern I can place. If I *know* you, I probably won't do that..usually (Note to NS: It had been a whole week since we had moved out of the house! I PROMISE I recognized you...2 seconds later!!! lol)
I am not bad with famous people, either...I can recognize the really famous, most of the time, if the picture isn't really weird, and I can recognize others, if there is something I can latch onto. Otherwise,
IMDB is my FRIEND! :P
I get by by recognizing speech patterns and voice tones; overall facial structure and body build; walking patterns; settings; and then if I am actually talking to you, and I STILL haven't figured it out, I can listen for cue words, that will clue me in. I am not completely nonfunctional, though..some people are completely, totally faceblind. I am thinking it's like the difference between being nearsighted without glasses, and totally stone blind. I am the former, obviously. And then there are the ones who rely on others to tell them who their wife and kids are. And for the record...face blindness is NOT real blindness...we can see perfectly fine!!! We just don't retain any record of what we are seeing! Okay, *I* do, mostly, but total faceblind people don't. And I am really good at reading expressions, and seeing *other* details, to remember. Oh...and I didn't realize til yesterday that not everyone thinks all dogs, or all cats, etc, look alike. :p Apparently that's a symptom, too, lol. (I think my inability to remember the way to get somewhere, no matter how many times I've been there, if I was NOT the driver, has something to do with it, too...drives my dh freaking NUTS, lol!)
Anyway. There you have it. Totally random, useless trivia about me. I figure, it's a rare enough, unheard of condition, that you might still be interested, right? Right? :D Maybe next time I will get into my
synesthesia (what...doesn't EVERYONE think in colors??? :P )
Credits:
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Blood and Ink2.
Andrea Shishmanian3 and 4.
Magnolia Forever5.
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