For the very longest 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 significant 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’s, but to me she was another ‘different’ person. This kind of feeling went on for days at least, if not 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 member, there was not much that I could resort to.
Another prosopagnosic episode is when I was passed my teen years. This particular day I chose to be on the bus to commute. 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 stepped on this same bus. The person seemed at least a decade elder than my parent. Nothing happened out of the ordinary. I think I’ve noticed that this person didn’t have a chance to be seated. I was sitting at the seat until this bus reached my destination, and I walked off the bus with my bag. This person, whom I shared the bus ride to school, was now heading to the same building that I was headed to. Later it occurred to me that this person was a very prominent person that I expect myself to know personally. I even took a course from him in the weekly morning classes 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, even to this day, the thought of this episode still makes me cringe, and shameful for not recognising this person on that day’s bus ride.
Should you be one of the persons that I haven’t recognise nor greeted, while you were expecting an acknowledgement on my side, I humbly apologise to you. I could only imagine how awful it must have been. Some even might have been offended or frustrated with my aloof response, and very rightly so. I would feel the same as you do should I have been treated that way. Once again, I feel very sorry 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 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 think that I could make out a person’s face fairly well. However, this is yet another quirk of mine.