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Notes -
You know what I really look forward to?
AR glasses with facial ID and rolodex features, and fuck the privacy concerns.
I have ADHD, and for the life of me I can't remember names and faces of someone I don't see every day unless I make a concerted effort to memorize it. My brain would rather accrue all sorts of garbage insight porn and random trivia than something like that. This a problem I'm sure many of you face, or at least the insight porn addiction, but it's a pain in the ass for someone with an enormous family who has to familiarize themselves with an ever rotating cast of characters in their hospital.
I am deeply envious of anyone for whom this comes naturally. Just give me something innocuous that reminds me that X is my aunt's cousins nephew's dog's trainer's dog or something, and appends records of our conversation.
I've already forgotten the names of half my classmates in med school, let alone actual school.
What is it that allows some of us to remember names and faces? In university I was roommates with a guy who had his own band and was very gregarious and beloved. I would regularly be out with him and people would approach, I'd whisper ("That's John Johnson you met him last year at X's party, he's with Debbie Debson she's Y's friend) and my friend would proceed to say their names at their greeting and thus become more beloved (I myself was not remembered by said John and Debbie).
I have been teaching for more than 20 years and I can name every student in my first class in Japan in 1998. I am not exaggerating. I have upwards of 300 students now and although classes began on April 2nd I know probably 60% of their names. I saw a girl (woman I suppose) whom I used to teach probably in 2010 the other day and although I would not have summoned her to memory had I not randomly run into her, I knew both her first and last (maiden now) names, and said them immediately. She did remember me by name, as well, but it's not so hard to remember the guy who stands up and lectures for 90 minutes twice a week.
Prosopagnosia is when you cannot recall faces. I suppose there's a lite version as well. I am whatever the opposite is.
My situation is certainly not so bad that it'll end up listed as a neurological condition or in the DSM manual, by itself.
It's probably a failing arising purely from my ADHD, as is my tendency to simply zone out when traveling and not remember the route I took. With conscious effort, I definitely can remember those things, but I'm simply jealous of people as lucky as you, and I'm not sour-grapes enough to invent a term for it, heh. Many things in psychiatry are quantitative and not qualitative, so I just drew the short straw.
At least I'm very good at bullshitting till I figure out who they are from context. And it's likely somewhat genetic, given that my mom has a milder form of the same problem whereas my dad and grandpa keep track of everyone (and they know a lot of people).
Rejoice in being superhuman in that regard. That's not a disease. Or if it is, it's one I wish I had. ADHD just sucks, I'm lucky mine is mild.
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