After reading the title of this blog, those of you out there who have been annoyed by my recent opinion pieces might be nodding about now, while saying, “Well, duhh. I knew that.”
To which I respond, “Oh shut up. I don’t mean like that.” LOL.
Although, it really is not a laughing matter, and I’m quite serious.
I have always struggled with facial recognition. While I’ve never had an official diagnosis, I can best describe it as some form of face blindness.
While I don’t have a problem recognizing those I’m close to, like family and friends who I see in my everyday life, I may not recognize someone who I haven’t seen for a while or if they show up someplace where I don’t expect to see them. This might be a person who I’ve been close to, and it isn’t necessarily someone who has changed in appearance.
I’ll give you a few examples. When I was in high school in Havasu, I dated a boy named Joe Morgan. We dated for about a year. Years later, when Don and I moved to Havasu I knew Joe worked for the local electric company who our contractor had hired. But I didn’t give it much thought.
One day, as I was at our new house, there was an electrician on our back porch finishing up. I set something on the back porch, and we exchanged a polite greeting, and I went back inside. Sometime later, after I had left the house, my husband went outside on the porch and the electrician asked him if the woman who had come outside was Bobbi Johnson. That electrician was Joe.
Months later, Joe had to do some electric work at my mother’s house a block away. Afterwards she said, “Bobbi, how did you not recognize Joe? He looks exactly the same as he did in high school.”
And she was right. After that incident, if I happened to run into Joe around town, I recognized him. Something in my brain had clicked into place.
But it wasn’t just Joe. This has happened to me repeatedly over the years. A friend from college stopped by the restaurant unexpected, and I had no clue who she was. Another boy I had dated my senior year of high school stopped by the real estate office with his wife, and he was a stranger to me. A friend from junior high…and on and on.
When Don and I were in real estate at Heirloom Realty and someone came into the office, the idea of going out to the front counter alone terrified me. Failing to recognize a client is not good for business and damn embarrassing. If we were alone in the office, Don, who has excellent facial recognition skills, would always greet whoever came into the office.
Don and I moved to Lake Havasu City in the early nineties, and yet I rarely ran into old friends from high school around town. Or did I?
The worst part, they are often people I have wanted to see again. One was Kathy Ross, a good friend from when I lived in Covina. We had lost touch over the years; I thought of her often and even tried to figure out where she had landed. Facebook wasn’t a thing yet.
One day, when out shopping, I ran into her. She introduced herself, and I sort of went blank. Her face was a stranger—it was like someone impersonating my old friend. It is hard to explain and may sound absurd. But there is an emotional disconnect between me and the person I can’t recognize when this happens. I wasn’t rude, but I wasn’t friendly, and the random meeting turned into a very brief hello, and I never saw her again. I imagine she thought I was a jerk.
Now, had there been an arranged meeting between me and Kathy, and I expected to meet her, my brain would have been looking for familiarity, and I would have probably recognized something, and may have even thought she hadn’t changed that much.
I know it sounds strange, but it’s something I’ve been dealing with for as long as I can remember. Has anyone else experienced something like this?
