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You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, my current project, is the story of my quest to see clearly. It all began with a chance remark at my twentieth high school reunion, which, in turn led me to discover a disturbing family medical secret. Researching the inherited condition, I came upon a phrase that would unexpectedly change my life: face recognition. Up to this point, I knew nothing about the tiny part of the human brain called the fusiform face area, where, when we are confronted with a human face, a sophisticated series of perception processes begins instantaneously. Or in my case, does not begin. Face blindness? I’d never heard of such a thing. Was not being able to recognize my family members a key part of being related to them?
Unable to distinguish humans by face, I rely on hair style, body type, clothing, context, voice, and gait to make good guesses. I make a lot of mistakes. I have walked past my best friends on the street, failed to find them in restaurants, and missed my own mother at the airport. My brain has the same filing cabinet for storing faces—the hardware—that others have. But the filing clerk in my brain, instead of organizing my face files neatly, flings each bit of face information out the window. I can’t access any memory of a human face, ever; not even my own face is familiar to me. When I see it in a mirror, I’m always surprised. I also recognize people all the time, using their distinguishing non-face features (hair, outline, context, and most often, voice). Anyone who is unusual in any way—I’m a big fan. Face blindness is a bad name for the disorder. I’m not blind in any way—my vision is perfect. This is a perception problem, a processing error. When I am looking at your face, I “see” it, I just don’t know it. The book to read: Bill Choisser’s.
Until very recently, it was thought the disorder was extremely rare. Now, researchers think 2% of the population is affected, to some degree. (I’ve got a serious case: I’m in the bottom 1% of face blind people.) Whenever I speak on the topic, there are always a few people who come up to me afterwards and say, “This explains so much!” If I’d known I had the disorder (which I’ve probably had from birth—there’s no way to really know) earlier, much would have been easier: job interviews, dating, teaching, committee meetings, parties, collecting kids at laser tag….
If you’d like to know exactly what it is like to be face blind, go to Cecilia’s site. Do you think you might have face blindness? Go to faceblind.org and take a simple screening test online.
A chapter from the memoir appears in The Alaska Quarterly Review and The Best Creative Nonfiction. Other excerpts appear in Arts and Letters and Organica.
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