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.
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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.)
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†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.
Yeah, I find that plots that depend on recognizing people’s faces under extreme conditions are so weird to me. Like… humans can do that? Really? You saw this guy one time on the news and now you run into him in real life and you know who he is? Just because his face was shown on the news once? How is that even possible? I often question the legitimacy of such plot points even though I know my personal experience is not normal for human beings, because it just seems so completely implausible. Meanwhile, here I am not recognizing my own daughter when I drive past her on the street. (Or worse, walking up to her guests at her birthday party and addressing them as if they’re her.)
Honestly, I’ve never wondered how people could not realize Clark Kent was Superman. Take your glasses off and wear tights and a cape, and I wouldn’t recognize you either. Also I’d be too busy staring at the cape because WHEE CAPE! :P
One thing I find unrealistic about stories is when someone is telling someone else about a conversation they had and they remember everything WORD FOR WORD, in the exact order that it happened. If it was me, I’d be like “and then we talked about penguins for a while, and then he told me this story about…oh wait, before that, he told me someone broke into his office and moved a bunch of stuff around!” I’d make a horrible detective.
Tags:
#(June 2018) #conversational aglets #prosopagnosia #embarrassment squick #amnesia cw #cordyceps tcftog #Superman
Brinens and Things 
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