First with my mother. For a very long time that I could remember to that point where I was either nine or ten years old, my mother had not changed her hairstyle. However, on that momentous day she changed her hair. While I was back at home from school, answered the door, and encountered a lady that is a bit familiar, but couldn’t recognise. Until then I had a cordial relationship with my mother, and that feeling was mutual. However, although she had acted as my mother with the guise that nothing unusual happened, I became suspicious of this person. She seemed to know everything on the affairs of the house, and the family, and even her voice had quite a resemblance to the voice of my own mother, but to me she was another ‘different’ person. This kind of feeling went on for days at least, if not for weeks. However in the end, I accepted her as my own mother. Since my father, and grandmother, and the rest of the family treated her as his wife, as her daughter, and as a family, there was not much that I could resort to.
The second time I had experienced a prosopagnosic episode is when I was in my early twenties. I went to school most times on a subway, and sometimes on a bus. This particular day I chose to be on the bus. This bus route was for seated public buses. Luckily I managed to secure a seat during the way to school. Some number of stops later, this person must have took this same bus. The person seemed at least 10 years elder than my parent. Nothing happened out of the ordinary. I think I’ve noticed that the person didn’t have a chance to be seated. I was sitting at the seat until that bus reached my destination, and I walked off the bus with my bag. This person, whom I shared the bus ride to the school, was now heading to the same building that I was headed to. Later it occurred to me that the person was the Department head. I even took a mandatory course from him in the weekly morning class on the first semester for at least 12 weeks in a row, and I have never missed a single class then. Perhaps he didn’t make much of this bus incident. I had experienced no repercussions. However, to me until I graduated school, and even to this day, the thought of this episode still makes me feel sick, and irksome, and shameful for not recognising him on that day’s bus ride.
Hope this makes you feel better, I hope this makes you want to forgive me of my wrong-doings to you, if you are one of the person that I haven’t recognised and greeted, while you were expecting an acknowledgement on my side. I could only imagine how awful it must have been, some of you might even have been offended or frustrated with my aloof response. I humbly and profusely apologise many times to those of you that might have been affected.
Maybe there might be a more exact term, or a different diagnosis for my particular condition. Most times I don’t feel that I am a prosopagnosic. Many times or on most occasions there is a time and place I could expect a particular person. That person usually has a voice and movement patters like the gait or posture that differentiates themselves from others. This contextual makeup distinguishes a person very appropriately. When this whole pattern emerges to a person at once, with the help of the person’s facial features, I usually recognise the person. And I feel that I could make out a person’s face fairly well. However, this is yet another irksome quirk of mine.