Embarrassing face-blindness moments?

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I am a little bit faceblind. Not completely, I can recognize most people that I know well, but if it's an unfamiliar situation, or out of context, like seeing my family at school instead of home, I don't recognize them.

Sometimes I'll see someone who looks like someone I know, and smile or wave, but it's not really them. Sometimes someone I know sees me, but I'm not sure if it's really them or someone who just looks like them, so I don't react, and then they ask why I ignored them.

lol. I can stop rambling. It's hard to stop at times, since, being a small quiet female, I have to fight like heck to get the floor in most settings. However I am capable enough of stopping my monologue when I see that people aren't acting interested. It is my full time job to talk to visitors to our museum about virtually any topic in entomology. This is how I got into this sort of situation, not my social ineptitude... well... other than the not recognizing people thing.



In general, I like your strategy! I typically use honesty as my policy (since I am useless at lying anyway). However, in this case, I can't really make your offensive statement because I don't know what the truth is. I have never been diagnosed with face blindness. Furthermore, I don't know if I can be, because when I take the online tests for face blindness I actually score in the 99th percentile of normal people (powers of observation ftw!). Granted, those are all bald male CGI faces in one context, with which I don't mind making eye contact. I don't know why exactly, but real people are much more troublesome for me.

Also, I did try telling one other friend that I have trouble recognizing people's faces, and that I thought I might have something called face blindness. However he outright both interrupted my explanation and laughed at me. He is really a nice person otherwise, so it really hurt my feelings. Since then I haven't had the guts to do anything at all when I don't recognize someone. I mean, I've ignored it for 26 years so far. This is nothing new to me. I was just hoping there might be some sort of third option out there, other than telling people I have a disorder or lying and making up excuses.

I mean, hey, so this guy will probably never talk to me again, just like the other friends I've failed to recognize over the years, ... but sometimes when I can't tell my uncles apart, or when I confuse family members I can really hurt their feelings. No matter how well someone knows me, no matter how hard I try to explain, I feel like they still take it personally when I mistake them for someone else.

I have the trouble that I work in a store that is pretty well known in the city I am in. People recognize me from work all the time and start talking to me while I'm grocery shopping or what not. I usually have no clue who they are and feel really bad because sometimes they pick up on it and say things like "You really don't recognize me?" I also have trouble in the store because we card IDs for any credit card transaction and if people make a purchase and then look around for a few minutes more, by the time they come back up to the counter for another purchase (even within five minutes) I have completely forgotten their face and think they are a new customer. So, when I ask for their ID, I get people complaining that I already saw it but I cannot remember them so I still have to ask. I forget customers' faces who have come in to the store regularly since I started working there two and a half years ago.

I don't have trouble with my family or people that I know well but anybody else is fair game for faceblindness, especially if I see them outside of the environment that I know them in.

That is my experience too.

My most embarrassing: I didn't recognize my Mom in a convenience store once. She came up and started talking to me and I had no idea who she was. To be fair, I didn't live at home anymore and hadn't seen her in a bit.

This. I often won't acknowledge to people I recognize in public because I'm always afraid that it's just someone who looks like them. I wait for the other person to acknowledge me first.

Definitely, it just happened to me the other day! We ran into some friends from college at the mall and I didn't know that they even lived in this city. I had no idea who they were, while my husband carried on a conversation.

I have meet different family members in stores out of there normal area didnt reconize them.
One boss had seen every day for 2 years didnt recognize him at work because he didnt have his hat on.
::oops:

Yup, I've been caught out by this quite a bit. Now, if I have an opportunity to explain myself, I just say I have prosopagnosia. The word's usually big enough that they either just nod, pretending they understand, or ask about it further and it becomes a conversation topic.

OHH Fern, I just reread your OP. OH you thought he was a patron of the museum, but you didn't recognize him as your friend?

Oh wow, that's a completely different angle.

I have done something that I feel terrible about. I have a cohort of grad students and I was so tired for a week I didn't even remember that a peer S. was in my class. I saw him in the library and I proceeded to tell him about all the work that goes on with professor so and so and he's like, "Chris, I'm in that class too." That was week 8. There's 17 students in the class.

I appologized. I told him, I'm really tired and under the gun. He didn't take a picture of me.

Fern, when your friend took a picture of you, without you noticing it, were you talking to any musuem patrons? Or does the photo show you talking to yourself? Did he write anything about the photo?

I have this problem, too. I've worked in retail and I have so much trouble recognising some customers, even if they've come up to the counter only five minutes before. I love it when they have a distinctive feature like dyed hair or striking clothing.

People out of context is another trap. I was doing some volunteer work at a theatre once when someone came up to me and started talking. I recognised her face because she has striking features - and a distinctive accent - but I had no idea who she was. It was only later that day, after racking my brains for hours, that I remembered she works where I go to uni.

That happens to me a lot. Just this week I did not recognize my boss for the third time... even asked him once who he might be. He thought I was making fun of him.

I suspect another issue I have that may be embarrassing is that I tend to view people who have similar hair as "looking alike." Like if you take Tim Curry and Eddie Izzard with goatees, to me they look virtually identical but for hair color. But other people tell me they do not resemble each other at all.

Right now two of my nieces both have black hair, so I sometimes have to test the water a bit to determine which one I'm talking to.

Despite that last sentence, I feel my face blindness issues are mild.

Yes, sometimes I have embarassing face-blindness moments.
I sometimes see a person and think they are someone I know and then I'll talk to them or wave at them. Or I'll see someone I know but I'm not sure who they are, where I met them, their name,...anything....I just have a feeling like I know them and then they either will talk to me or they don't and if they don't they will mostly think that I've ignored them which is bad.

Just some days ago....I asked someone for directions for a course I'm taking I thought he was in my class.....but then I realised he might not be this person (so I stopped my question and went my way). Then I entered the class room and there was this person who I thought I have asked for directions but I wasn't sure at all if it really was him. Did I ask him or did I ask someone who looks like him (just some minutes ago)? I couldn't tell.

On another occasion I was in the metro when I saw someone looking at me who looked like someone I knew. Actually, like two persons I knew and I wasn't sure: either it was person A (who I didn't like to talk to) or person B (who I'd had great conversations with)....so I ignored this person to "play it safe". But after some minutes of contemplation (being out of the metro), I decided that he was probably person B which is why he stared at me with scornful look (because he expected me to come over and talk and I didn't)......

I usually don't try to repair damage. Unless I feel safe to do so which is dependend on circumstance.

Ho boy... I had two instances of faceblindness today. One person had a different hairstyle; another person had a baseball cap on.