A couple weeks ago, I ran into an old professor, someone I hadn’t seen in 20+ years, by the elevator at work. We were both wearing masks and only met eyes for a second, but something caused me to turn and watch him walk away. Then I realized I recognized his outline. “Dr. McGillivray?” I asked. And I was right—it was the man who had kept me employed for several years in the English department computer lab, the same man who hired me back after I quit teaching, even though I was no longer a student at the university, just so I could stay afloat.
I consider it a minor miracle to have seen him—not because he is retired and rarely on campus these days, but because I have so much trouble recognizing people when I’m out and about, especially when I’m not expecting to see them. I have mild prosopagnosia, commonly known as face blindness, and my brain has trouble processing and remembering faces.
I think I was born this way, but only became aware of it during a drawing workshop I took with the illustrator Yuko Shimizu in 2015. During class, she warned us that, if we saw her on the street during the lunch break, she probably wouldn’t recognize any of us because she had a hard time with faces. Until that moment, I had never heard anyone describe face blindness as a real thing, even though I’d struggled with it all my life.
My prosopagnosia means I often don’t recognize loved ones out in the wild. Last month, I had trouble finding my husband at the Korean market because he was less distinctive-looking there than if we’d been at Superstore. Good friends have stopped me in the street after I walked right by them, thinking they were strangers. I worry about not recognizing my children when they come out of school at the end of the day.
In this article about his own struggles with face blindness, Oliver Sacks notes how his best friends had distinctive features, which helped him recognize them. This is how I see my loved ones, too, in my mind’s eye—a collection of memorable features surrounded by a strong outline. And their clothes. I remember the details of their clothes.
My obsession with clothing most likely comes from the fact that I can remember it better than I can faces. Often, it’s the first thing I note about a person, which sounds awful, but I think of it as a social survival technique, helping me sort out who’s who. The only problem is that people change their clothes, lol.
Once, a friend and I saw a cute dress hanging in the window of a trendy shop near work, so we went inside and found several sizes hanging on a rack. I chose the smallest one, a French size 36, and tried it on. Coming out of the fitting room, I handed it to the saleswoman, who asked why it didn’t work out, and I said, “It was a little big. But I’m guessing this is your smallest size?”
She glanced at the tag and said, “No, the one in the window is a 34.” And then we looked at each other silently for a full minute. She didn’t offer to get the one in the window, and I, confused by why she wasn’t offering the one in the window, didn’t ask for it either.
My friend, who thought I was being totally ridiculous, convinced me to go back the very next day to try the dress in the window. I was hesitant until I saw it was a different woman working in the shop. So I went in and said, “Hi, I’d like to try the dress in the window, please.”
And she said brightly, “Oh, so you decided to come back!” 🤦🏻♀️
After many years, I can still recall the details of a dress I did not even buy (though I can only show you its outline here because I lack the drawing skills).
But the saleswoman? No clue. Maybe she had brown hair? Or blonde? Medium build? What does medium build even mean? I can tell you, however, that she was wearing a button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up and medium-wash jeans the second time I saw her.
:) Teresa
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So I assume you know, but I gotta make sure -- you've heard of Heather Sellers' work, right? She wrote a book called You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, and also a piece called Where Am I? for True Story that was reprinted in Longreads at https://longreads.com/2019/09/24/where-am-i/ Both delve into her face blindness. I haven't read the book but I read an essay that predated the book published in one of the Best Creative Nonfiction anthologies.