I’m cleaning out my notepad program in preparation for a move to a new† laptop††, and I found this Tumblr draft dated March 10th, 2016.
—
One of the worst non-obvious things about prosopagnosia is that it *reduces the amount of serendipity in your life*.
All else equal, I have far fewer chance meetings with old friends and colleagues than a non-faceblind person would. I have witnessed my mother having chance meetings that I would not have had in her place. I abandoned Orphan Black partway through the first episode because it disturbed me too much, knowing that if they’d based the clones’ on *my* genetic structure instead of hers, the entire show would never have happened. Sarah and Beth would have walked right by each other and never known. How many plot hooks (let alone easter eggs) have I missed out on in my own personal narrative?
(I went bowling on my 22nd birthday. In the group playing on the lane next to my family, there was a girl who looked just like I would if I didn’t wear glasses. I assume it was a coincidence. I assume she was not a secret clone or long-lost twin. If I am wrong in that assumption, I will never find out. If one day I passed someone I assumed to be a stranger, and they were actually a former acquaintance who would have given me some life-changing piece of information had I struck up a conversation with them like old times, I will never find out. Almost certainly, I have at the very least passed by acquaintances who would have given me non-life-*changing* but life-*enhancing* pieces of information, had I only known it was them.)
(This post inspired by CORDYCEPS [link], another story whose plot is dependant on one person recognising another’s face. I like the mystery and I like Benedict’s writing, so I’ve been reading it anyway for now.)
—
†And by “new”, I mean “seven years old, but significantly higher-spec than my current seven-year-old laptop”. Dad’s laptop broke, so we agreed that I would buy a “new” one for me and hand my old one down to him. Back in the day, *I* used to get *his* hand-me-down computers, but my computer requirements have now outpaced his (fortunately not to the point where my usual laptop budget of ~USD$300 is an insufficient amount of money), so.
††My backups are generally pretty thorough, and it wouldn’t have been a disaster data-wise if I’d woken up this morning to find my laptop permanently unable to boot (which did happen to me one morning in my mid-teens! no warning, no particular reason AFAIK why that motherboard chose that night to fail, it just did!), but I’ve found a couple overlooked spots.
Tags:
#(I did finish Cordyceps) #(it was good if a bit horror-y for my tastes) #oh look an original post #prosopagnosia #amnesia cw? #cordyceps tcftog
Brinens and Things 
3 thoughts on “”