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The awkwardness of meeting people you sometimes know

I'm trying to be better about updating here (this is for you, freshmen that I don't know!).

Do you know who these people are? 


I don't, but I am told that they are famous. I have no way of knowing.

Over the summer, Brad Pitt announced that he suffers from face blindness (prosopagnosia). This is a condition where you are unable to recognize people based on their face. As a self diagnosed sufferer of prosopagnosia (it's almost impossible to get an official diagnosis), I'm always happy to learn about others who go through this. Mrs. Lozano says that I should introduce myself, since he says he would like to meet others. Problem is, I wouldn't be able to recognize him either.

People often ask me, are faces just blurred out. No, they're clear, but there's nothing that really leaps out at me as an anchor for my memory. There needs to be something distinctive: hair style, piercing, scar, tattoo, glasses. I would walk past my own wife as a stranger if she changed her hairstyle (it has happened. I make her text me a picture of her haircut these days).

So if I don't say hi to you if I see you out in the city, remember it can be difficult running into students outside of the school. When I meet someone wearing a Savio uniform, I can narrow their identity down quite a bit.

  1. Gender narrows the list of possibilities to around 200.
  2. Hair color can bring it further down.
  3. When I was still a teacher, I would usually assume that students would keep to their usual seat and not move (not always correct. Certain students with similar hairstyles used to like to mess with me.)

However, if I run into someone at the grocery store, it becomes much more difficult. For example, I have a cousin that got pretty upset when I walked right past her at HEB. She said "It's me. Your cousin. LAURA!" I'm not deaf (not really).

I actually have 20 cousins on my dad's side of the family (10 siblings, 7 siblings, 3 siblings (only 2 cousins on my mom's side)). They're all older than me. Most of them have children. Family reunions can be really awkward. I tend to just play along and pretend I know which cousin I'm talking with until I hear someone say their name.

Do you think you have face blindness? There's an unscientific test here (the scientific ones are pretty dull). 

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