Back when I took swimming in 1970, we had to wear caps that completely covered our hair. Made it even harder.
I’m terrible. If a woman makes a big change to her hair color (or even hair style), there’s a good chance I won’t recognize her*. If I’m used to seeing you at work in a suit, I’m unlikely to spot you in a T-shirt at the grocery store.
*I’ve warned my wife about this trait. Either I won’t notice the change in her hair style, or I won’t recognize her. It’s pretty much 0% chance of me being able to compliment her on it, unless I happen to have seen the appointment on her calendar.
It’s amazing how much of recognition is due to hair.
I remember when I was in Navy boot camp, we were there for a couple of days before getting our heads shaven and I had gotten to know quite a few of the guys. After being shorn, I couldn’t recognize anyone! Luckily, the Navy had thought of that and we all had our names on our clothing.
I moved into a new group at work during one of my bearded phases.
After about a month, I shaved it off. Two members of my team came to my desk to ask if I needed help finding where I was supposed to be.
We had a gas shortage crisis in 1974 and again in 1976 or so (artificially manufactured crises, some claimed), and people could only buy gas on alternate days according to the last digit of your license plate. So one evening as I went in to work (I worked night shift), I saw a group of guys clustered around a car in the semi-darkness. It appeared that they were stealing the license plate from the car.
I went in and reported it to the security guard. He just shrugged and said they were probably switching plates so somebody could buy gas the next day.
Turned out, those were the very guys I worked with every day. Just outside the door in the parking lot, I didn’t recognize them. (To be sure, it was dark, with only the lot lighting there, but that was fairly well lit enough.)
I work in a clean room environment. Which means we have to wear a smock that covers us head to toe. The only thing that’s left visible are the eyes.
So basically at my work, you get to meet every one twice. Once in the fab, and once in the break room (or outside the fab).
This fact seems weird to no one I work with.
Interestingly too: Some of the shyer more quiet folks tend to be a lot more out going when they have their smocks on.
It gets even weirder in foreign countries. People you know pretty well in one context, then in different clothes on a business trip or vacation in another country. Think your check out guy at the supermarket check out and you see him in Hong Kong… Discombobulating.
Aside: I remember that. In Texas, overnight gas prices jumped from 21 cents/gal to 55 cents/gal. We didn’t know how we were going to cope. We had heard that in Europe, gas cost $1.00 or more per gallon, but we knew it would NEVER go that high here. :smack:
Train station. I’d been at a new job, and in a new town, for less than a month. A family: petite blond woman, two kids, lamppost of a husband who’s wearing some sort of sports equipation in oh-my-eyes colors. The husband greets me by name, I answer a confused “hi”. He laughs and says “you don’t know me :D” “Well, nooo…” and examine him; he says “work”, I say “Oh, so you come to work in camo, I see!”
“In camo?” “Well yeah, at work you always wear grey and the way you slouch in your seat you end up below me, not a head and a half above!”
The wife was laughing her ass off. They got on the train having a giggling discussion about whether he slouches when sitting or doesn’t (yes he does).
Clothes, hair and glasses do a lot. I’ve had students not recognize me at first (I was being required to wear to work the most… Pentecostal-approvable clothes I owned), classmates do the same both to me in school and to my whole group of friends in college at parties…
American style Burqas!
True, we really didn’t know how to cope. The gas pumps, as they were designed and built in those days, were physically unable to be set for more that 99.9¢ / gallon. When the price went above $1.00, as it quickly did, stations everywhere had to improvise to compute the prices the customers should pay.
I used to have trouble, too, recognizing people in unfamiliar contexts.
My grandpa taught me a simple rule – ignore what people are wearing. Ignore how they do their hair. Instead, focus on their eyes and cheekbones.
That works the vast majority of the time.
It makes me wonder now how nudists recognize each other?
Off topic but could I ask, what college was that?
The same way that dogs do?
I wonder how many people bump into their proctologist and be told “I didn’t recognize your face”?
The typical method was to set the price on the pump to the amount over a dollar, then add $1 per gallon to that. It wasn’t hard to calculate the price for the fraction of the last dollar, but the pumps didn’t have the kind of automatic shutoffs they have now and even in the midst of a shortage some of the guys pumping would overfill to get up the amount up to whole gallons even if the gas was spilling out on the ground.
More recently a gas station off I95 near here had a huge price sign, big enough and tall enough to be seen from the highway. While the cents portion had programmable lights to change the price they had a 1 painted on the sign for the dollars. Once the price went over $2 they were screwed.
I’m embarrassed about this. We have a 'little person" (lets call her Sasha) at church. Well one time another little person came up and I called her Sasha and of course that wasnt her.
I think also that people doing Living History also really “become” the other person once they get into the role. They will change their voices, mannerisms, and will even answer to a new name. Dang they would be hard to recognize out of character!
I was teaching a night class at a local college. One of the students looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him. About the third class we were talking during a break. I ride bicycles a lot. He rides bicycles a lot. Started talking about various rides. Well it turns out that we’d rode our bikes across Missouri on a 7-day trip with about 350 other people a couple of years in the past. He didn’t recognize me either. I guess riding with a helmet; sunglasses; and in skin tight Lycra (or shorts and t-shirts after the day’s ride) is a bit different than being somewhat better dressed in a college classroom!
I think it might have to do with context. I once saw one of my chemotherapy nurses at the grocery store. Her face was extremely familiar but I couldn’t place her. If she’d been in scrubs about to stick a needle in my port it would have been easy. But in between the bananas and lettuce? My brain froze.