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Face Blindness: I’m Prepared This Time

Eriq LaSalle   Do you recognize this guy?  I wouldn’t have!

I was reviewing my emails, and event schedule from Reader’s Favorites this morning. The email listed the names and titles of some of the people who will be guest speakers at the awards ceremony this weekend.

It says,

“Our guest speakers will be Leigh Cunningham – Executive Director of the AIA (Association of Independent Authors), Mark Wayne Adams – Award-Winning Illustrator and former Disney Artist, Dete Meserve – President of Wind Dancer films (TV shows like Home Improvement and movies like What Women Want with Mel Gibson), and renowned TV and film actor, director and producer, Eriq LaSalle – best known for his portrayal of Dr. Peter Benton on the TV show E.R..”

Pretty cool, I thought—until the panic set in. I looked it over realized that I would not be expected to recognize anyone (by face) on this list—except for one—actor, Eriq LaSalle.

Not wanting to be the only one in the room who could not recognize the actor, I decided to googled him because as you can probably guess, I had no idea who they were talking about.

When I saw his picture, I did feel some hint of recognition—it seemed I’d seen him somewhere before.  After reading his “credits,” I realized that was because I have seen him time and time again. I’ve watched the movies, seen the TV shows, and still I am convinced I would never have recognized his face in person. In fact, I KNOW I would not have.

So to combat my face-blindness, I am writing this blog post. Now—I can pull up my blog, look at his picture and try to match it to the faces in the room.  My husband laughs at me, but this is life inside my autism bubble!

 

Want to read more about Face-blindness and Autism? READ:

I Wouldn’t Recognize You if You Stood on Your Head

Autism and Face-Blindness: Facial Recognition Difficulties in Autism

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Jeannie Davide-Rivera

Jeannie is an award-winning author, the Answers.com Autism Category Expert, contributes to Autism Parenting Magazine, and the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. She lives in New York with her husband and four sons, on the autism spectrum.

5 Comments:

  1. When I was a teacher, the school let us see student ID pictures. I made flash cards and studied them, but it still took me 5-6 weeks of a 12 week semester to get all the names down. And even then, I would have a pair that I would get backwards, EVERY semester. And that pair, once side by side, would look nothing alike. I finally realized I connect personality with name, not really face. (And I’m somewhat mildly face-blind. Eventually I am able to connect face and name – for a while anyway.)

  2. I so know what you mean. I had another ugly run in with face blindness the other day that I was going to write about. If only we could prepare everyday like you did for this event!

    • That would be nice! Lol I met some great people tonight and now I’m worrying that I won’t recognize them tomorrow! Everyone will be wearing something different, I just hope I don’t walk right by them in the morning. I’m studying their faces in pictures I took.

  3. i absolutely hate going somewhere where i don’t know anyone and unfortunately going to media events this is about 98% of the case so I like to find out who is there and then stalk the poop out of them so at least I can pick them out in a crowd. My worst has been going to an event and someone from twitter recognizing me but I don’t recognize them so I go into full speechless sweaty panic mode!

  4. I study faces before any event. Even for people I know I have met before. It is why I love facebook so much. It is such a useful tool to use to study people to learn which ones they are and recognize them. Because pictures you can stare at long enough to sort out that this person has eyebrows shaped like this, and such, without the other person getting weirded out (as long as you don’t tell them, because that tends to make them uncomfortable) and also, it is sort of uncomfortable for me, too, to spend a lot of time staring directly into a person’s face when they are actually there.

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