So you can't remember
names, and you think that's a problem. Tough toenails, as I used
to say (before I dumped my old crowd and joined a more sophisticated
circle).
But back to your so-called
dilemma. The reason you get no sympathy from me is because I have
a much worse problem: Though I have little difficulty recalling
names, you see, I have absolutely no memory for faces. And I can't
even blame my aging brain. This affliction has plagued me all
my life.
That's not so terrible,
you say. Really? Look at it this way. What's the good of having
lots of names on the tip of your tongue if you don't know where
to spit them out? On the other hand, if you remember faces but
not names, you have it made. When you're at a party or walking
down the street and you bump into someone you know you've met,
you can smile brightly and say "Hey! Good to see 'ya!" or "How
absolutely delightful to have encountered you!" depending on your
own sophistication level. Me, I walk right by without a flicker
of recognition, leaving the other person assuming I'm an obnoxious
snob. It's painfully embarrassing, especially if I had just had
breakfast with that person a couple of hours before…or if he's
the man who had filled in as a substitute at bridge the previous
week…or if she's the woman to whom I had given a card last May
that said, "To My Wonderful Mother."
Okay, so that last
example is a slight exaggeration. Actually, I do recognize close
friends and relatives. However, if I see most other people outside
of the environments with which I associate them, they might as
well be total strangers. For example, last December when I was
clearing snow from my car in front of my house, a man drove up,
got out of his car, and offered to help. I thought it was the
guy who had just moved out of the condo next to mine. Wrong. It
was my financial adviser whom I visit regularly. He had come by
to drop off a Christmas present. But because he was wearing a
ski jacket instead of a business suit and he wasn't behind his
desk, I didn't recognize him.
Most people cannot
identify with such experiences. One friend is particularly skeptical.
That's because she remembers everyone she ever met since she was
two years old, even if she hasn't seen them in fifty years and
they've had three facelifts in the interim. Then she rubs it in
by saying something like, "You'd have known her, too—she
has the same look around the eyes as she had in the second grade."
Yeah, right. Like I'd remember how someone's eyes had looked like
this morning, never mind in the second grade. I not only can't
convince this particular friend that I'm not lying, I've come
close to losing other newer friends whose feelings are hurt to
think they apparently made so little impression on me.
If I hear later that
I've inadvertently snubbed someone, I of course try to explain.
Fortunately, I now have ammunition to back up my apology—photocopies
of an Ann Landers column reprinting a letter she had received
from a woman who suffered from the same handicap as I. Good old
Ann checked with doctors and learned that such a malady actually
exists. It seems that some of us have "faulty cranial wiring…probably
a second cousin to dyslexia" that causes us to forget facial features.
Ann went on to report that "People with dyslexia were thought
to be stupid, until research proved they are often brighter than
average." Nyah! Nyah! (Sorry. Guess I haven't completely purged
my vocabulary of those old expressions.)
But I won't flaunt
my superior intelligence, if you promise not to be angry if I
don't speak to you the next time I see you.
Rose Mula was an executive
assistant, a public relations specialist, and an operations manager
for a New England dinner theater chain before discovering a passion
for writing. She has written business and trade articles to earn
a living, and humor for the fun of it. Her work has appeared in
Yankee, Modern Maturity, The Christian Science Monitor, The Reader's
Digest, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, and more
than four dozen other magazines and newspapers. She can be contacted
through email.
