Condo by the sea life is fantastic but it can be tricky for some of us.

A lady, “Jane Doe,” at my condo building’s elevator, asked me if Cheryl and I would like to visit with her, her husband, and friends for a gathering the following weekend. I said I’d check with Cheryl and our schedule.

We were good to go. So I emailed Jane that we’re looking forward to the get-together with your friends. Jane emailed back: Hi, Lee! I was a little confused by your email. Sadly, we are not having a get-together on Sunday. Perhaps your RSVP went to the wrong email. I hope you have a great day!

I replied, “Oops, wrong email address, sorry.”

But it wasn’t the incorrect email address—I thought she was the person who had invited us. Now I wasn’t sure who asked us. Jeeeezus.

I chatted with Cheryl about the awkward exchange. I thought it might be another lady whose home we had been to, but I wasn’t sure. She had been away for the winter but could have come back. So I carefully sent that lady, “Mary Smith,” this email: Mary, please refresh me on our conversation yesterday. Sorry, I had a lot on my mind at the time.”

She responded, “Sure, we would love to have you over with some friends at 4 pm Sunday.”

Whew! Case closed. We did attend and we had a great time.

There are 113 units in our building, and for me it’s like a sea of tiny boats coming off elevators, down hallways and across the lobby—without national flags flying. Most, I have seen many times and recognize, but too many I fail to, again and again. It’s more evident with women, especially for some reason—blond women. This face blindness has been with me all my life. I didn’t want to expose my sense deficit; and I knew many of you had trouble remembering faces and names so I just tried to pass as part of that tide.

But recently, with the help of my daughter, Kathleen, who is also face recognition challenged, I discovered the name of our plight: prosopagnosia. “Prosop” plus “agnosia” from the Greek means face ignorance. So I’m ignorant about your face, or at least blind to it—”face blindness.”

It’s a matter of degree: Famed neuroscientist Oliver Sacks(Awakenings) had a severe case of it, as did Chuck Close, the famous artist who just happened to live in the West End of Long Beach, NY, before his death. In his book, The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks says, some people have the reverse of face blindness and can recognize people’s faces whom they only met briefly a long time ago. If you use an IQ scale, these people would be at 150, while those who rated as low, as Sacks did, would place at 50. Sacks said that some people with face blindness get lost easily and can’t recognize their neighborhoods or houses. Sacks was one of these. If Sacks biked around his neighborhood without a friend as a teen, he couldn’t find his way home.

Severe cases of face blindness are about 2% to 3.5% of Americans, but Sacks says as many as 10% of us have some form of it. My face blindness is on the mild side, but I do know it affects my daily life. I have to see someone many times before I’m confident to know their face.

As a cop, I struggled with face recognition, especially in the Warrant Squad. I coped though; I studied WANTED photos to the extreme: looking for scars, moles, and tattoos, of course but also eye and ear shapes, dimples, chin clefts and hair lines. And I often found people wanted on warrants at their homes hiding under a bed or beneath a pile of clothes in a closet—inside a wall—or in the attic—rolled up in a rug. Telltale signs we had the right guy? Ya think?

Other times neighbors or store owners told me they sometimes saw the fugitive on the corner at night. They’d call me, giving me, as per my request, the description of their clothes down to the sneaker color. That helped a lot.

But I also had the pleasure of working with partners who were just phenomenal at face recognition. One, Mike Reyes, had the eye of an osprey. Again and again, he’d amaze me with his eye of a ravenous raptor.

Once, in Brooklyn the family of a man wanted on a murder warrant told us he was at his girlfriend’s a few miles west. We went there but were unsuccessful. Now, the young man was nondescript: Male, Black, about 5’8″, medium build, short hair—no outstanding features. On the way back to our office, we drove past a Fulton street corner where a group of about six males gathered. As we passed, Mike said, “I think I saw him in that group.”

Now we were nowhere near his family’s house nor his girlfriend’s, and it was unlikely he’d happen to be at that random location. But I made a U-turn, drove to the corner—and we had our man.

Now, I was driving that unmarked car, had I not and been looking out the passenger side window, that young man would have been as safe from capture—as when a babe in his mom’s loving arms.

The “guy” was my boss, Lt. Chet Levey.

As I said, my daughter, Kathleen has face blindness too; a high school teacher she has similar struggles. She told me she saw a student in the hall and asked his name, only to discover he’s in her English class—and has been for months—in the first row.

Kathleen’s embarrassed by these encounters, and so am I in our building, supermarkets, coffee shops, boardwalk, and beach. I know I pass people often and smile and nod. If they talk to me, I sometimes ask their names only to find out I already know them and have taken photos of their children for them.

Kathleen has an online shop, Bayside Buttons: https://tinyurl.com/BaysideButtns where she includes a variety of tee shirts and other items for those so afflicted, like these:

Jane Goodall, Gorillas in the Mist, had prosopagnosia, even with chimpanzees but most notably with human faces. You can have prosopagnosia as a genetic consequence or the result of an injury, tumor, or infection that has damaged a part of the brain. Or a degenerative disease like Alzheimer’s.

People with face blindness cope by noting a distinctive facial feature, beard, mustache, or eyebrow shape. Clothes, posture, gait, and context to the environment help too. I’m much more likely to recognize a neighbor in my building than in the Supermarket. Often I can spot people on the boardwalk by their gait.

People at the lowest point of the face blindness spectrum can’t even recognize their spouse or children in a group. Could that lead to: “Why sweetheart, it’s not what it looks like, it’s my face blindness; I thought she was you—again.”

When you see another sufferer, or me, and we say, “Hi, Guy,” or we smile and nod, please bear with us; we may be blind to your face.

About my condo building invite-error: I told neither about my oafish act; but they’ll recognize themselves here, I’m sure.

So, to you both I say, sorry, I’m a prosopagnosic. Maybe I’ll “See” you soon.

Perhaps at the next open board meeting, I’ll propose that we all start wearing name tags, with a large font—I’m getting old too.

Be well,
Leebythesea