I sometimes panic about not recognizing even people I know well. There was that one trip when my husband was out of town for two weeks and I was sitting in the airport waiting for his flight to come in (back in the days when you could do that), and the stress level went up, what if I didn't recognize him when he got off the plane? This was a man whom I had seen and spent considerable time with for several years.
I did recognize him immediately, but the fear was real.
Or when a good friend moved out of state and we decided to get together for a girl's weekend at Yosemite. She also flew in and I had the same panic--it had been probably 2 years since I had seen her.
I did recognize her immediately, but the fear was real.
Hair color & style is the main thing I notice. Like the first week at a new contract, when I accosted a young woman with shoulder-length straight blonde hair and started dumping info and questions. She finally said, bewildered, why are you asking me--I know nothing about these things--and directed me to the proper woman elsewhere in the building, who also had shoulder-length straight blonde hair.
I have read that most people have some degree of Prosopagnosia. Some research indicates that a majority of people can't recognize many famous faces with the hair removed from their photos.
Another good friend stopped smiling a few years back. Last time I visited, she complimented me on my ability to summon up a happy smile for photos at any time. I said surely she could work on that, too, since she has a lovely smile. But that's when she told me that she had a missing tooth (I think one 3rd from the front) and knew that people would judge her on that so she would never smile with open lips. I said, this is the first I knew that you were missing a tooth.
people – – including me – – worry about what other people think about how they look. Truth is, they're just trying to figure out whether you are the woman with the shoulder length straight blonde hair that you met yesterday or someone else entirely Who has exactly the same sole feature that you noticed.
