When you live with prosopagnosia, every hello is a guessing game

I’M

not rude. I’m not distracted. I just have no idea who you are. I might recognize you if we meet at our weekly shiur, but if we meet at the doctor’s office, unexpectedly? No way.

I beat myself up for years, thinking that I just didn’t care enough about other people to remember what they looked like. Then I discovered it’s a brain thing called prosopagnosia, or face blindness, and that one in 50 people lives with it. Some people have such bad cases they can’t recognize themselves. (I’m lucky — one of my front teeth is discolored, so when I smile at the mirror, I can tell it’s me!) When most people meet a stranger, they take a mental snapshot of the face and file it in their memories, but I throw the snapshot out immediately. I don’t want to, but my brain does it anyhow.

So I have all sorts of tricks to work out who other people are. After five minutes of staring at my husband’s brother, it dawned on me that I could tell them apart by their coloring. And I love it that kallahs wear lacy white dresses. Once I find the young woman in the lacy white dress, I know that the lady fussing over her must be my friend who invited me to her daughter’s wedding. I might have recognized my friend, sort of, if she’d been standing by her mailbox, but now that she’s wearing an elegant sheitel and makeup, I don’t have a hope.

I memorize what she’s wearing — I’m good at that! — so I can smile brightly at her later and know which circle to dance in.

When our daughter made a kiddush for her baby, she was one of many 20-plus-year-old women in the room, and they all looked alike to me. When the rabbi asked me to bring the new mother over so he could say mazel tov, I had no idea which one was her. But then she picked up the guest of honor — her newborn — and that was enough of a clue.

Usually, members of my immediate family aren’t a problem for me. It was only the crowd of similar-looking people in the kitchen that made that one tough. We only have two daughters, and one is a redhead and the other isn’t, so I don’t mix them up. For some reason, recognizing our sons is easy for me, although our neighbors, who have known them all their lives, can’t always tell them apart. And the faces I saw when very young are deeply imprinted; I’d know my siblings from any angle. My scores on grandchild face-name matching are pretty good, too. Just to make sure, I repeat their names in my head every time I see them.

When trying to identify people I know less well, I watch out for mannerisms. If you tuck your chin into your left shoulder when I say something funny, I know you’re my kids’ pediatrician. Speech impediments, accents, and vocal timbres give me a hint. And I love people with imperfections. Birthmarks are wonderful! If you ever broke your nose, or have a mole, I can recognize you, and am intensely relieved to meet someone I’m sure I know.

When I meet people with unremarkable faces and no quirks in their voices, postures, or gestures, I withdraw while I try to figure out if I know them or not. It puts a crimp in my relationships.

After I told my friend that I know who she is because one front tooth overlaps the other, she didn’t smile easily around me for a year. I learned from that not to tell people how I recognize them.

Having prosopagnosia doesn’t just affect friendships. It means I’m completely confounded by school plays, too. If an actress changes her costume, she may as well be a new character, as far as I can tell.

Interestingly, people with face blindness often can’t recognize cars either. You may not have noticed it, but designers put “faces” on their cars, and guess what? They all look the same to me. When I arrange to meet you at your car, I’ll stand in the general area where you’ve parked and listen hard for the unlocking click.

I have a face-blind friend. She almost never tells anyone she can’t recognize them, and compensates by being super friendly and greeting everyone, just in case. She’s brilliant, and a quick thinker, and thrives on adrenaline. I can almost see the cogs in her brain spinning frantically, and the rush that gives her, as she tries to identify acquaintances before they can figure out that she’s clueless about who they are.

There was a well-known rabbi who did the same thing my friend does. He used to smile and nod warmly to me every time we met. I couldn’t imagine why, especially since, where we lived, men and women didn’t interact very much. So I asked his daughter-in-law. “He greets all women like that,” she told me. “He taught in Bais Yaakov for so many years, he assumes that any woman he meets might have been a student of his, and he’s afraid to insult anyone by not greeting them. He has no idea who you are.”

That’s one way to cope, but it’s not mine. I don’t like to come across as a neb, but I do tell people about being face-blind. I’d rather they thought me slightly brain-damaged than aloof. That’s because, after years of pretending I recognized people, I realized something about myself: When I acted as though I knew who everyone was, I was disconnecting, even from people I liked and respected. Only part of my mind was on what they were saying; most of it was busy trying to guess who they were.

The problem was that when I admitted, “I have no idea who you are,” people’s faces fell. I’d see the hurt, and was ashamed to have caused it. So even though it made me feel a bit stupid, I started being forthright. “I can’t identify people by their faces, so I’m not sure who you are,” I say now. Then, you can remind me (maybe for the tenth time — sorry about that!), and we can connect on a level playing field.

It works so well that I’ve begun to wonder why I ever covered up my deficit. It turned out that honesty was met with acceptance, which led to better connections.

When I took down my mask, I found that others did, too.

Please do…

…introduce yourself every time we meet, even if we’re such good friends that you can’t believe I don’t recognize you. One of my best and kindest friends even taught her children to introduce themselves. It’s such a relief to know who people are.

I won’t know who you are if...

...you’re wearing a new sheitel, or had your old sheitel cut in a new way; you don’t usually wear makeup and you’re wearing it now; you’re dressed up; you’re in a setting where I don’t expect to see you.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 975)