This is the second installment of Faking Normal, a series by J., an adult with Autism who hopes to demystify Autism and help readers understand themselves or their children better.
One of the things most fascinating to me about Autism is that there are so many facets to it, and no two people have exactly the same manifestations. In fact, I did not even connect one of my own issues to Autism until I read an interview with Temple Grandin wherein she described an identical problem. She warned her interviewer that, should she run into her in a different context, she wouldn’t recognize her. Ms. Grandin has a condition sometimes associated with Autism called prosopagnosia, or face blindness. I was a little bit thrilled to read that, since it’s something with which I’ve struggled my whole life. I have something in common with a celebrity! Yay!
Although it sometimes still presents a problem for me, I have some ways around it. Most people have at least one unique facial or physical characteristic with which I can associate their name. The problem reemerges if that person changes the detail with which I associate them.
My husband is, among other things, a bald guy. I don’t think I realized the extent to which I depended on his baldness to recognize him until he picked me up at the airport wearing a baseball cap. I’d seen him wear hats before, but never in a context where I had to pick him out of a crowd. I walked past him two or three times with my bags, wondering, Who’s the guy in the hat? Why is he staring at me? Eventually my phone beeped. It was a text message from my husband asking what on earth I was doing. I looked back at the guy in the hat and finally realized that he was the man to whom I’d been married for seven years.
I used to subconsciously find traits with which to identify people. Now I do it deliberately. When I meet a new person, I scan (subtly, I hope) for something distinctive about them with which I can pair their name in my memory. I try to make it something permanent, like a scar, unusual eye color, or a distinctive nose. If I make it something like hair color or an odd clothing choice, what am I supposed to do if the person dyes his hair or changes his shirt? Additionally, if I make it something like a crooked tooth or dimples, I’m pretty lost until the person smiles and I can see my marker.
A lot of my friends know that I do this. They also know that I will never, ever tell anyone else what I use to remember them. Chances are it’s a trait with which they’re uncomfortable. I mean, you can’t really tell a good friend, “I only know who you are because you’ve got that mole that kind of looks like Wisconsin on your neck.” It’s not always something awkward; for example, I’d have no problem telling the guy with the intense blue eyes how I remember him. But if I told one person, I’d have to tell everyone, and then some feelings would get hurt.
In general, I’ve gotten used to the fact that people do get their feelings hurt when I don’t recognize them. Even if it’s a close enough friend to know about my issue with facial recognition, the feeling seems to be, “But don’t you recognize me?” It’s nothing personal, I promise. And I usually do a pretty good job of faking normal, especially since usually if I just make small talk with a person I don’t recognize, they’ll eventually say something that will trigger my memory.
To end on a positive note, my prosopagnosia makes me excellent at some aspects of attorney-client confidentiality. Right after law school, I worked at a bankruptcy firm in a small town. Given the sensitive nature of bankruptcy, it’s generally good form, when encountering a client in public, to pretend that you don’t really know who they are unless they approach you and initiate conversation. I never had to pretend! I genuinely had no idea! Isn’t that convenient?