About bumping into people

eekysign

New Member
If they're coming up to you, my trick is to introduce whoever I'm there with, then either throw a mini-coughing fit, or bend to tie a shoelace - something that explains why I'm not introducing MY friend to the person I can't remember. That way, the "stranger" has to introduce themselves to my companion. Works really well!

Stranger: Hi! How've you BEEN!?
Me: Oh, hello!!! Oh, sorry, this is my friend Bob! (cough cough)
Stranger: Oh, hi, Bob, I'm Mary.
Me: (yay!)
 

klmno

Active Member
ok, thinking about this a little more, I remembered something that happened a few weeks ago. I was in the store and someone bumped into me, literally. It felt like the kind of bump that friends do sometimes if they see you out though, instead of an accidental bump. When I looked at the person, I thought I knew her but wasn't positive so I just kept looking at her thinking she would speak if it was who I thought it was. She didn't speak but kept standing there while I looked at her and after a long staring of each other, she turned and walked away very quickly. I had my hair and so forth the way it normally is so most would have probably recognized me. I left thinking it was just someone who looked similar because she never spoke and was dressed differently than the person I was thinking of normally dresses. Now I'm wondering, it was a pretty big coincidence to have same hair color, be about the same age and size and stand there looking at me if she didn't know me. Any chance someone would do this if they were offended that I didn't recognize them and speak?

That would have been a real good time to smile and say "hi", huh?
 

Marguerite

Active Member
I'm good with faces but shocking with names. As long as you can recall a face then it's not so bad. If the face is out of context then it's easy to think, "they look familiar but I'm not sure where from..."

But not recognising the face in the first place is a big problem. It also has a name - prosopagnosia.
[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia[/ame]

There is an online test you can do for this. Most people with tis are only partial. easy child 2/difficult child 2 is partial with this. But to have this in full it can be really nasty - you don't even recognise your family, your loved ones, even your own face. Generally prosopagnosia that bad is the result of brain injury. A case I saw involved a woman who had a brain injury, she had improved a great deal and was coping with living, with working, with all her life skills - except she couldn't recognise her husband (or anyone else). She would be talking to a family member and if thye left the room then came back in, she would think, "He LOOKS a bit like my husband but it isn't. It's a different person."
Rarely, someone has full prosopagnosia with no explanation. A girl I saw in a dcoumentary about this said it was murder gonig on dates. If she left the table to go to the bathroom she could find herself trying to talk to a totally different person, having accidentally sat back down at the wrong table. And there was a time when she was on a date, the guy excused himself to go to the bathroom and when he came back she didn't recognise him at all and got really snooty because tis strange guy seemed to be trying to chat her up!

These people said they coped by letting people know. They told their friends and family about the problem and said, "If I don't recognise you out in public, please remind me who you are. It's got nothing to do with how close you are to me or not - I have this problem with everyone."

The other things they did (and easy child 2/difficult child 2 does this too) - if you're out with someone and you're not in each other's company the whole time, then make a point of memorising something about their appearance, especially their clothing. easy child 2/difficult child 2 actually will say to people, "I like that brooch you're wearing," or "I like your blouse." She does this especiallywith customers because often a customer will forget a bag of groceries and this way she can know which bag of groceries goes with which person, when they come back. She can remember the groceries, but not the faces of the customers!

It also goes hand in hand with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) (another reason why we're sure she does have Asperger's). difficult child 3 is better than he used to be, but would often react to people he had known all his life, as if he had never met them. Especially if they were out of context (such as bumping into people at the shops).

Our mall is an awkward distance from home especially by public transport. Sometimes I might see someone I know and offer them a lift home, rather than them having to catch the train then the ferry. difficult child 3 will chatter away to them introducing the family, even if they already know us. A few times it's been someone from church - luckily they know us well and understand him, but they could be forgiven for feeling hurt by his lack of recognition. It's not that he doesn't remember the name; it's that he doesn't even remember the face, to him they are total strangers, often even after we've said, "This is Janet from church - remember when you sat and ate lunch with her last week?"

If you have something like this in your family, then there is an increased chance of you having it to some degree also.

So tell people then find your ways of coping by trying to memorise things you CAN distinguish about their appearance.

Some years ago we had identical twin girls at our church. They really didn't like being seen as identical but few people could tell them apart or know who was who. A lot of their friends had worked it out though, so I took note and paid attention to what one twin was wearing one day compared to another. One had slightly shorter hair with a fringe, the other had no fringe. I heard the fringed one called by her name and made a small rhyme to myself, using her name and "fringe". So for months I could identify which was which - until the second twin got her hair cut while the first one let her fringe grow out. Very frustrating, because in that time I still had not found another characteristic I could use to distiinguish them.

I see prosopagnosia as being like my experience with those twins, only it applies to every person.

Difficult stuff.

Marg
 

klmno

Active Member
Wow, it would be pretty bad to have a problem to that extent. This is more like if I only see someone occasionally in a business setting, where he/she is sitting behind a desk so I never know exactly how tall or what size they are, and the hair/makeup/clothes are prepped for a nice work environment- then, I see someone out in a T-shirt and jeans and ball cap on, walking around, and the hair color and eyes and face look very similar but that's all I have to go on so I'm not positive if it's the same person. I end up standing there wondering if the business person I'm thinking about is the type who would wear a T-shirt, jeans, and ball cap. Not that there's anything wrong with it- I do it- but I'm just trying to reason out the odds of it being that person so I don't emabaress myself by speaking to a stranger like I know him/her or being rude to someone I should recognize. LOL!

The situation I referred to in a previous post was more confusing because I would have assumed I did not know the person, except it appeared very coincidental that she happened to bump into me, then look at me like she was waiting for me to say something, but she never spoke either. I think it was the same person, but then I don't get why she didn't speak.
 
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