Column
Whenever I would go to movies with my friend Emily, she would settle back in her seat afterwards for a debriefing.
"OK," I'd say, "the actor playing that guy seemed pretty familiar. Who's he?"
She'd grin at me and roll her eyes. "Uh, Denzel Washington?"
"Right," I'd say. "Right. And, uh, the other guy?"
"Clive Owen."
"Right." I'd pause. "Well, I knew the girl was Jodie Foster."
"Good job," she'd say, patting my shoulder.
And so it went.
I don't recognize most famous actors, unless they always play themselves. Or, uh, any actors, really, famous or not. This means that plots are very hard to keep track of, because it's sometimes tough for me to recognize an actor from scene to scene.
This wasn't just a problem at the movies---it was a big problem back when I was a theater critic, because I couldn't recognize an actor from show to show, or if we met later on the street (thank goodness for playbills).
In fact, I have a hard time recognizing anybody I don't know very, very well, or see on a daily basis.
Recently, I discovered I'm not alone. There's even a word for it: Face blindness, or Prosopagnosia.
Think "colorblind" or "tone deaf," but with faces. Faceblind people can see faces—they just don't have good facial recognition. Harvard researchers estimate that as many as one in 50 people have face blindness to some degree—but often they don't recognize it because, well, they've never known anything different.
After taking a few tests, I've learned that I recognize fewer than 60 percent of faces that should be familiar to me. Usually I rely on other things to recognize people—how tall they are, how they walk, what their hair looks like, their voice.
For a single lesbian, this is a very unfortunate condition to have.
Especially when it comes to dating.
Meeting someone for the first time off Match.com or MySpace is easy—no one expects that you'll recognize them from their doctored glamour shot.
But people generally expect, I've found, that you will recognize them next time you see them. Or if you happen to bump into them on the street. Especially if you've spent the night in their bed.
But, uh, I don't.
You see the issue.
To compensate, I've taken on some acting skills myself. For example, I always assume I already know anyone who crosses my path. This means I give a lot of happy, "it's-good-to-see-you" smiles to strangers, but hey—I make a lot of new friends that way.
When I'm meeting someone in particular, I try to get there early and then busy myself with something else—looking at the menu in the window, reading a book. That way, they'll tap me on the shoulder, and I'll know who they are.
A few years ago, I found myself having to be exceptionally clever. A woman I had been dating for a month was meeting me at the airport in a different city. I knew I wasn't going to recognize her. I couldn't call her face up in my mind. So I stood at the gate, scanning above the crowd, so I wouldn't make eye contact with anyone—and finally, there she was, swinging me around.
"You're so cute," she said. "I was right there, and you were looking so hard, you didn't see me."
Yeah. Acting props, right there.
Eventually, I do learn faces. My siblings and close family I know. My dearest friends. My roommates. My officemates. The key is seeing someone very regularly and very often and either having a picture of them so I can stare at it and try to memorize it, or sitting across a table from them, one on one, so I can really concentrate on trying to remember their face.
For me, it's like trying to remember a string of random numbers, 38, 1110, 30, 7, except that I'm hit with new strings every day, all the time.
I'm grateful there's a word now. There's something about having a word, a definition, that makes it easier to work around.
A couple weeks ago, I met a cute girl at the gym. We scheduled lunch. "I'm faceblind," I told her, "so I won't recognize you."
"That's OK," she said. "I'll be wearing a white coat and green scarf."
And she did.
And I knew who she was, right away.
Emily would be proud.
Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist based in Chicago. Email her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail .com, or read her occasional blog and column archive at jennifervanasco.com.
I Have No Idea Who You Are
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
