Dear LPG, 

After all the time we have known each other, my best friend and I often still find ourselves out and about together fairly regularly.   I feel really lucky to have a friend that I have known for so long that we were at school together, went our separate ways in the world of work but still find the time to spend time together in retirement.  

Now we can be, we are each other’s travel companions quite often again whether our shared outings are special and pre-planned or just a trip town to the local shops.  We have always done, and still do, so many things together that our husbands just accept the way things are although having a close friend for all that time means that we are each very aware of those little irritations each thinks the other has.  I know that I am not without mine but my friend’s can be quite embarrassing. 

She has this habit of recognising complete strangers as long-lost people she has met and, having never been backwords in coming forwards, it is as if she has a people –magnet which forces her to nearly always go up to such a person and say hello only to be told that she has had another case of mistaken identity, but after all this time it sill happens and she is never deterred.  It can be quite embarrassing for me although I now know the signs and I have learned to discourage her a little when I feel an episode of this coming on…  It sometimes works.

 I admit to getting it wrong too every now and then but I am not so eager to make my mistakes quite so public, I am more likely to mention my thought to her before going in for the embarrassing confrontation.  

It did get me thinking though about the fact that, when recognising people visually we usually use their facial features and, with only a nose, a mouth and a couple of eyes and ears to go by, it is remarkable that we are able to see the differences as well as most of us do.  

The internet tells that there are about 8 billion world residents at the moment and, with only a few facial variables to measure by, and the realisation that our faces have the ability to age and be altered in so many ways these days, it is a wonder that we recognise anyone beyond those people we see daily.

I asked google about it recently and found out that my friend might have a condition called prosopagnosia; a sort of face-recognition dyslexia.  I just wish she was not so ready to make it known so often.  I also found the video on a subject that I thought worth sharing.  It informs that nearly everyone has a doppelganger if they really take a look.  

I often wonder what my friend would have to say if she thought that she could see ‘herself’ in a crowd?  I have to say that I am not sure that I am in too much of a hurry to find anyone who looks just like me.

VI, Croydon

VI shares that Video…

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… and a bit about face blindness…

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