Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Face Blindness, Or, How I Could Help Sherlock Holmes


In the last month or so, there have been more TV specials on face blindness. (If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that I’m face blind.) Sadly, I missed these specials. But I did stream part of one yesterday.

In the 60 Minutes episode, a blond-haired female reporter (I have no idea if I’ve ever seen her before) was interviewing a man with face blindness. He told her that he once apologized to a man before he realized the man was himself in a mirror. My kids gasped when I told them the story. And then, they marveled and made comments that at least I’m not that bad. (There are varying degrees of face blindness, and I’m not bad.) That was before the kids realized that I told them that story for a reason. Don’t get me wrong, I have never apologized to myself in a mirror. But I have been in a public place with lots of people and mirrored walls, and I’ve seen a face that seems familiar and a second or two later realize, “Oh, that’s me.”

But before you think, “Oh, that’s pathetic,” (yeah, I admit it is a little pathetic) remember that I’ve developed skills that you probably haven’t. I can pick people out based on the sound of their voice, the cut of their hair, and the way they move. So I was taken aback when we watched the Sherlock Holmes, part II movie. In the movie, Dr. Watson and a woman must find the woman’s brother before he sets off a bomb. But the problem is that the woman’s brother has changed his face with plastic surgery! So—oh my gosh—they can’t tell which man he is. I thought this was stupid. Easy-peasey. Even if we assume that he dyed his hair and cut it in some new style, all the sister had to do was look for his ears, his hairline, and the way he stands and moves. After all, this was her brother, not a stranger or someone she’d met only a couple of times. If he were my brother/parent/child, I could’ve picked him out in a minute or less.

The moral of the story is if your ever need to find a bomber who’s had plastic surgery, pray that he has a face blind relative.

8 comments:

  1. Your story raises all kinds of fascinating possibilities for a novel, should you ever decide to try your hand at a mystery or thriller. I love the idea of a face blind sidekick to the private eye uncovering the hidden villain.

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  2. Interesting. I had never heard of this until one of the contestants on Survivor said he had it.

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  3. I missed that you are face blind- I bet that was a good thing to figure out! Sometimes I wonder if I am name-dumb bc it's so hard for me to remember names. Thanks for sharing! (I wonder if your blog readers will have a rash of face blind characters in their stories in the next six months;)

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  4. Sorta scary to imagine how many incarcerated felons were convicted on eyewitness identification alone.

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  5. That is so cook that you have skillz to recognize people that way. Awesome.

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  6. You could totally be Sherlock Holmes' Dr. Watson. :]

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  7. LOL, I want you on my team! :)

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  8. Hm. That would be an incredibly useful ability for a spy or a anti-intelligence agent to have. Now I want to make a protagonist who works for the FBI and is at least partially face-blind, whose job is to root out dangerous criminals/spies who have had plastic surgery or are wearing disguises...

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