Have you ever had that weird feeling that comes with failing to recognize someone you've known all your life? Maybe it's a friend you haven't seen in six months who's lost 70 pounds since you last saw them, or your doctor turning up at the grocery store in a Hawaiian shirt and a week of vacation-beard stubble. It's almost like they're in disguise.
Now imagine this is your experience with every single person you know -- including your own family, spouse, and best friend. Constantly having to squint and say, "Bobby? Is that you?" That's what life is like with prosopagnosia, aka "face-blindness," an often hereditary condition that results in an inability to recognize faces. We sat down with someone who has this, and it turns out it's even weirder than you'd expect:
#5. I Can See Faces, but I Can't Remember Them
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When I tell people I can't recognize faces, a lot of them immediately call bullshit. To be fair, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. "You expect me to believe you can recognize this can of Coke, but not your own mother?" Yes, actually -- I'll tell that story later. "OK, what color are my eyes?" Ignoring the fact that I could easily lie, you're right in front of me right now. I'm not blind blind -- face-blindness doesn't mean I have a big black censorship box where your face should be; it means I can't process the finer points of what I'm seeing. It's the same as how most of you think all babies look alike, until you have your own (and admit it -- some of you have the same problem distinguishing members of other races).
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And for some of you, it's babies of other races.
As bizarre as the effect is, the science behind it is fairly straightforward. Because reading subtle changes in faces is so important to our survival ("Is that the murderous Oggoth or his gentle brother, Hogar? Does that look on Oggoth's face mean that he is scared or angry?"), we as a species developed a dedicated part of the brain solely for the task of processing faces, treating it as its own category of object. However, if that part of the brain is damaged or fails to develop for whatever reason, you process faces the same way you do a regular, inanimate object.
"So what?" you might be saying. "That doesn't sound so bad. It's not like stacks of LEGOs are any more difficult to see than a person's face." I will forgive your spectacular wrongness if you will perform a small exercise: Look at this random picture of LEGOs for five seconds ...
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... then cover it and tell me exactly how many and what type of each piece is in the picture, and exactly where each one was positioned. That's what faces are like to me. I can see them perfectly fine, but I don't have the ability to process them as whole faces, rather than just piles of different face parts. Which means ...
#4. The Smallest Changes in Appearance Will Turn Loved Ones Into Strangers
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If you were suddenly tasked with, say, having to tell one rhinoceros apart from another (like if you started a racing circuit for them or something), the first thing you'd do is look for some obvious identifying characteristics ("This one has the scar on its horn, this one is a little darker than the rest," etc.). That's my primary coping strategy with people, to look for "visual hooks" that are unique to a person's face.
So, I have a friend who has one blue eye and one hazel eye, and I have another friend who is very tall -- if I make it a point to look for those things, I'm fine. Distinctive voices can also be helpful. Even something as nebulous as a unique facial expression can be a lifesaver for me -- I have one co-worker who I cannot recognize unless she smiles. She's a very average white lady in an office full of average white ladies, but when she smiles, I'm like, "Oh, hello Barb!"
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Note: This may not work at all jobs.
On the other hand, if I see Barb outside of work, at the grocery store or something, I'm going to walk right past her. I can't even recognize my own reflection if I don't expect to see a mirror. True story: I was at a bar one time and I didn't know they had mirrors on the walls, so I kept wondering why this chick was giving me the stink-eye until I realized that chick was me (this is also how I discovered that I suffer from Resting Bitch Face).
So if you do anything to mess up the context for me, I'm lost. If my friend with the distinctive eyes wears sunglasses, she becomes just another random person -- kind of like how people can't recognize Superman when he puts on glasses and becomes Clark Kent. It can be anything -- cut your hair, get highlights, wear a different coat, change the style of makeup you wear, and presto, you're a stranger to me. My husband is never allowed to shave, because I recognize him by his beard. Needless to say, I can't go to see any Wes Anderson movies in the theater, because I might end up following some random bearded stranger back to the parking lot.
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Don't get me started on how confusing this scene is.
And yes, I will fail to recognize my own husband. I've walked right past my own children, and my mother (who also has prosopagnosia) has done the same thing to me. One time, when I was maybe 18 or 19, I agreed to go to an amusement park with my mother because she was going with my brothers and wanted me to keep her company. We agreed on a time to meet, but when I showed up, I couldn't find her. So I'm sitting there on this bench, getting progressively more pissed off because my family is late and I'm hungry and tired and don't particularly want to be there. Then I spotted this woman wearing capris and sandals and a sun hat, and she's looking just as pissed off as I am. I silently sympathized. Maybe she's waiting for her ungrateful mother too.
It turns out she was actually waiting for her ungrateful daughter (me). I had forgotten my mom was wearing those freaking capri pants because that wasn't something she normally wore. She also doesn't wear hats -- she'd just bought that sun hat that morning, because she was tired of getting burnt. Meanwhile, I had decided to put my long hair up and wear a tank top, when I normally wear things like sweatshirts, so she couldn't recognize me. We were both stewing about being stood up, when we were literally standing right across from each other.
In other words ...
#3. It Can Be Socially Awkward as Hell
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One time, when I was in college, I was in the ladies' room having a cigarette, because this was back when you were free to give everyone around you cancer. Between drags off my freedom-stick, I was complaining to this woman about a sociology class I was taking. She suggested that maybe I just didn't enjoy the subject, but I insisted, "The problem is the instructor is fucking boring! She doesn't know how to lecture!"
Suddenly the woman turned white. Her tone immediately shifted into a snapping lecture voice that was all too familiar, and I realized she was the instructor.
Again, the change in context was all it took -- her "bathroom conversation" voice was different from her "teaching a college course on sociology" voice, so I hadn't been able to recognize her outside of the classroom. Needless to say, I never went back to that class, and when I dropped it, I didn't even have her sign my drop slip -- I couldn't show my face around her ever again.
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Because, unlike me, she would recognize it.
On another occasion, Harlan Ellison came to speak at my school, and I was part of the science-fiction club, so of course we all went to go see him. Right before he was supposed to speak, I was talking to a friend of mine, and this little man came up to me and said, "You're very loud." I said, "Excuse me?" and he said, "You're being very loud, and if you continue, we're going to have to ask you to leave." Then this little man reached over to me, pinched my cheek, and said, "Nice-looking woman, but so loud." I decided fuck that and had taken two steps toward this tiny cheek-pinching asshole to set him straight when my friend grabbed me and yelled, "THAT'S HARLAN ELLISON."
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"I have a mouth, and I'm about to scream."
And then there's the story of how I met my husband. He worked at a bookstore, so naturally I would hang out there a lot. But there was a problem: He had a co-worker with the same hairstyle. Even though they didn't actually look much alike, I didn't know either of them well enough to pick up any of the "visual hooks" I talked about earlier. Consequently, when I would go to the bookstore looking for my future husband, I never knew which one of them was at the counter. I just had to awkwardly stand around and wait for him to speak to a customer so I could recognize his voice, which I'm sure in no way made me look like a serial murderer.
But before I make this all sound too tragic, there is an upside ...
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