I was at a funeral and saw several coworkers. These are guys I work with 3-5 days of the week. Thing is when I work with them they are wearing overalls, uniforms, hats, or such and at the funeral most were wearing nice clothes and some suits.
Oddly, I had trouble recognizing them that way.
So I’d like to ask, have you ever been in a situation where you see someone in a different setting and you didnt recognize them?
Ex. My dentist is used to seeing people lying down and admits she has trouble recognizing them standing up.
My neighbor came to my house asking if I knew who owned a dog she had found. She was in a rush, as she was on her way to an appointment, so I offered to keep the dog while she was gone and walk it up to the local vet to get scanned for a microchip and she agreed. When I asked where I’d find her to let her know what happened, she was super pissed that I had not recognized her, which seems quite unreasonable, as she was not in her yard where she belonged.
I swear she still glares at me when she sees me and it’s been a couple of years.
Oh yes - the worst is one lady, who is a pharmacy tech at the drugstore where my husband gets his prescriptions, and also the mother of one of my son’s friends. I always recognize her at Walgreens, but never at PTA functions or the kids’ activities. I asked her once to please forgive me - that I just didn’t recognize her without drugs in her hand! But there are plenty of people I fail to acknowledge because they’re “out of context.” A trip to the grocery store is usually an adventure, because I talk to all sorts of people, all while mentally asking myself “did I go to school with that person? Is s/he a relative? A former client? My next-door neighbor?”
Same here (not your sister, I never met her:)). I need cues to recognize people and take away a major one like their usual style of dress and I can be lost. Women who change their hair style throw me easily, men who grow or shave off a beard become strangers.
When I was in college (an all-women’s college), I took swimming. I got to know my classmates in their bathing suits, with their swimming caps covering all their hair, no makeup, no glasses. We never recognized each other walking around the campus.
At dialysis, a woman came in to pick up her husband. I said “You look familiar…” She said “You do, too… WAIT! Swimming! You look different with your clothes on!” We both take a water exercise class at the local gym.
Of course, some people only heard the last part of what she said, and gave us some really strange looks…
I’m an airline pilot, and I frequently walk right up to my coworkers without being recognized when dressed in street clothes. They’re just used to seeing me in uniform. And I seem to have an unremarkable face.
All the time. I do Living History (F&I) so I almost expect it both ways - not being recognized and not recognizing others. We were at a mall a couple counties over and this guy came up and started talking to us. We had a nice conversation for about 5 minutes and after he walked away neither my wife nor I could put a name, face or even location to him. As far as we knew at that moment he could have been a total stranger and some Twilight Zone could have been going on. Turns out he was a Native we’ve worked with for ages and we had just never seen him outside of full paint and 18th century clothing. Put him in jeans, shirt and washed down and he was a total mystery.
I have this problem to a degree (moreso now that I’ve been somewhat reclusive for a couple years) but I have the opposite condition to a greater extent. I am constantly thinking that I know someone, or that such-and-such looks just like my neighbor from five years ago, or even that I’ve met someone already that I’ve only seen in photographs. I also see inherited family traits that nobody else catches until I bring it up.
I also have a huge case of what I call “That Guy” syndrome when it comes to people in visual media. I’m constantly looking That Guy up when I watch a movie to see if he was the crazy henchman in, say, Casino or Godfather III…or both. :rolleyes: (Then I peek to see which Law and Order he’s been in. :D)
I didn’t have this quite as bad till I dabbled in portrait painting a while back; you’d think it would have the opposite effect, but I think I started recognizing odd similarities/distinctions the average person doesn’t notice (distance between eyebrows or philtrum prominence, for example).
To the OP: Definitely. I’m bad at recognizing people I don’t know really well. I often use hairstyles, clothing, context, and other cues. I often see a neighbor lady when we’re both walking our dogs, and we’ve both been to the neighborhood dog playpen and chatted. But I realize I’d never be able to pick her out of a police lineup, with people of vaguely similar appearance (size, coloring).
Frankly, I don’t think I’d be able to pick a perpetrator out of a lineup, either, had I been robbed or something.
As a kid growing up in the 60’s, watching old 40’s and 50’s movies on TV, all the men looked the same to me, with the short haircuts and suits. Except Bogart, of course!
Even now, when watching movie or TV and we see a character who appears once early on, and then reappears later, I often have to ask my wife, “Is that the one who …?” She nearly always knows. It’s a superpower, I guess.
Like Learjeff, I’m fortunate to have a spouse who recognizes everyone, and it does seem to be a superpower. I swear, if Tony sat next to you on a 30-minute commuter flight in 1992, he will recognize you and eventually figure out the context - it amazes me!
Hah! That reminds me of when I was in a soul band that practiced at work; most of us in the band were employees. For one gig we needed a substitute female vocalist, and someone knew Jeri, who joined in for one practice and the gig and was great, and we chatted a couple times after that.
A few months later, I was in the cafeteria and a woman I don’t recognize comes up to me and says HI and gives me a big hug. Huh? Of course, I’m used to not recognizing people who recognize me, so I play it cool, and after a moment she asks how the band’s doing and DING I figure it out. Doh!
I think your opposite condition is just a side effect of lack of recognition. The same thing happens to me because I’m looking at particular features instead of recognizing a whole face. Sometimes I’ll identify the right person that way where others can’t, but mostly I get thrown off by focusing on a small set of similar features and missing something others pick up.
This past weekend, my niece got married. Honest-to-goodness, when her mother, my sister, as escorted down the aisle and seated, I didn’t recognize her! She was wearing her hair in a new style, and she was all gussied up, so I guess that had a lot to do with it.
About 40 years ago, I was in Opryland in Nashville. I grew up in Baltimore, so this happened way out of my neighborhood. I saw a man that I was certain was my 11th grade English teacher, right down to the way he brushed his hair out of his eyes. Imagine that - 3 years out of high school, hundreds of miles away, and I run into Mr. P. So I worked up my courage and went over to him and said “Aren’t you Mr…” and at that instant, I knew he wasn’t. I hid in the nearest ladies’ room for half an hour until I was sure he was gone. :o
This happens a lot at my job. Normal work attire is basically jeans or yoga pants and t-shirts. Sometimes scrubs. But basically, clothes people can wear to work and get dirty and won’t freak out if they get blood or poop or bleach or other messy stuff on it. Also, a lot of us who have long hair wear it up every single day. A few people wear makeup, but most don’t.
So then people pop in on their days off or pop into a bathroom to get fancied up because they’re leaving straight from work to some event or get together later at a trivia night or other sort of thing and everyone’s like “… can I help you?”
He had joined the military and we’d taken him to the airport and said our goodbyes. My mom then drove me to school and went on to work. A few hours later I was walking down the hall to another class when I see this person walking towards me with a goofy smile. For about 3 seconds I didn’t know who it was, it just didn’t make sense in my brain. It obviously wasn’t my brother as he was in a plane, far away.
Turns out after we left, his flight was canceled and he came to the school to get the house key from me.
It’s a running***** joke with swimmers. Seeing another swimmer in a normal oxygen-based setting is always an adjustment - you’re used to seeing them mostly-naked with wet hair, goggles, etc etc.
“I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!” is always fun to say.
