Context is Everything
Most people only have to meet me once
and they remember me forever. I guess as a whip smart, handsome,
foulmouth albino dude whose temperament falls dead center between
that of a sensitive, delicate artist and a drunken frat bro I'm
somewhat of an oddity. Or maybe folks just remember my shocking
white hair and how good I talk. Either way, people have always had
an easy time remembering me. On the contrary, I don't recognize
anyone because I can't remember what anybody looks like. Although,
that's a bit of a misrepresentation. The truth is: I can't remember
what anyone looks like because I never knew in the first place.
In college, I had a reputation as a
world class snubber. I never said hello to anyone I passed on campus
or saw at bars or parties and I think people just thought I was a
jerk, which I was; but I didn't mean to snub everybody! It's nothing
personal, I just don't recognize faces. Given my eyesight, most
people look about the same to me, or similar enough to be cast into
groups. Blonde Girls, Brown Haired Dudes, Gingers, Hot Girls, Dudes
I Could Fight and Win, Dudes I Could Fight and Lose, Dudes I Probably
Shouldn't Fight – you don't need to know all the intricacies of my
system. The point is, once I know the type of person you are, I'm
generally able to recognize you, but only in context. So, the Tall
Guy at work is Brad, the Tall friend of my friends is Ryan and the
Beautiful Woman I'm married to is Amanda. The problem comes when I
see people out of context.
After I finished grad school I was
working at a liquor store in LA, which I know is a very weird and
kind of depressing sentence. One day a man came up to me and asked
about Scotch. I took him over to the Scotch case, thinking his voice
seemed somewhat familiar. I helped him pick out a Scotch aged in
port barrels and he introduced himself to me as Jeff Melvoin. Well,
introduced isn't the right word because we'd known each other for
three years. Jeff had been my Professor at USC, one of the best
Professors I ever had and the Professor I most try to emulate when I
teach writing courses. What's worse, Jeff had been my Mentor after
USC, I'd gone to his house in Brentwood where we drank bourbon and
talked TV and guitars and he gave me notes on a pilot script I was
writing. This man was a personal role model, friend and one-time
colleague, one of the most influential people in my adult life and I
looked at him like a stranger. I was as humiliated in the moment as
I am remembering it now, and not just because I had an MFA and a job
at a liquor store.
Now, as a Professor myself, I teach
between 100 and 150 new students every quarter. Every 12 weeks or
so, I meet hundreds of new faces I'll never recognize but who will be
able to spot me ten blocks away for the rest of our lives. When I'm
at school, I can share a smile with these people and at least think
the Girl With Glasses I'm smiling at in the halls is the same Girl
With Glasses from my classes, but outside of school, things are
different. On five separate occasions, current or former students
have seen me out in the wild and said hello and I have greeted each
of them as if I were seeing a purple unicorn walking on a lake of
frozen green fire. I wish I could apologize to these students
individually, but I don't know who any of them were.
"You're Not You"
This has probably happened to you.
You're walking down the street when you see someone you think you
know. This person starts waving. You smile, become sure you know
this person and convinced they must be waving at you. You wave back,
only to approach the person and have him or her walk right past you,
at which point you realize the person was actually waving at someone
behind you. You don't know them at all. Red faced, you probably
walk on a bit faster, embarrassment quickening your steps. Because
of my poor eyesight, this false recognition happens to me all the
time and in way more embarrassing ways than just waving at the wrong
stranger.
In High school, I was friends with a
Vietnamese kid named Ha, which probably sounds a little made up. Ha
often wore a red Polo and baggy jeans. As most high school boys, we
had a relationship built on dick jokes, basketball and belittling
each others mothers. The first day of sophomore year I saw Ha at his
locker, red Polo and all, so I walked up to him and greeted him as
was customary for high school sophomores: I smacked him in the back
of the head. It was at this point I realized it wasn't Ha. I had
just smacked Stanley, who played football and wrestled. If I had
been a smaller dude in high school I probably would have gotten my
ass kicked, but I was a big fat hulking monster and Stanley was more
confused than anything about why the Stay Puff Marshmallow man from
Ghostbusters had just smacked him upside the head. I remember him
asking, calm and plain as day, “Hey, man, why you smacking me?”
“Sorry, you're not you,” is all I
could think to mutter before stomping away and wanting to kill myself
even more than was customary in tenth grade.
My problem of mistaken identity would
follow me through my 20s, when it was complicated by the fact I
Drank. I'd go out, get lit, get a girl's number and call her a few
days later. We'd agree to meet for drinks and I'd always have to get
there early because I would never, ever remember what the woman
looked like. A few times I was quite surprised, as I'd been
expecting a blond and a brunette showed up; or I thought I'd chatted
up a hippie chick and my date turned out to be a punk, or I thought
it was a girl I'd never met before and it turned out to be someone
from a writing workshop in college. That last one was probably more
to due with the Drinking than the eyesight. Once the world starting
dating online, things only got worse for me. I'd stand in front of
the bar where the girl I'd picked based on her best thumbnail had
agreed to meet me and look desperately at every woman who even
remotely resembled the picture I'd squinted to see online. I'd smile
at a super cute girl, hoping, praying she was my date, only to have
her walk right past me just before my uglier actual date showed up,
covered in acne, cat hair and claiming to be a nerd even though she
sure seemed like an idiot.
Now that I've successfully tricked a
woman into marrying me by being charming and awesome, there are
still many other social situations impacted by this false
recognition. One time in my 30s I thought I recognized my friend's
girlfriend at Starbucks. I knew she worked in the same building as
the Starbucks, so I thought this proximity raised the probability
that the blond woman I was staring at was, in fact, Erin. Well, when
I walked up to this woman and said, “Hey Erin, what's up?” she
just looked at me like I was crazy and slinked away. Admittedly,
running away upon seeing me didn't necessarily mean this girl wasn't
my friend's girlfriend, but something in this other blond woman's eye
roll was unfamiliar, so I'm sure it wasn't Erin. I've also
subsequently asked Erin about it and she insists this wasn't her.
That experience with Anti-Erin taught
me a lot. I no longer go up to people in Starbucks and say hello.
Even when I'm 99% sure I recognize someone now, I'm way too shy and
scared of humiliating myself. In that same Starbucks where Erin
wasn't Erin, I often think I see colleagues because one of the
colleges where I teach is right across the street. But I never, ever
say hello to anyone because I'm too afraid of being wrong. Instead, I
wait for them to say hello to me. It's a good, safe policy which
keeps me from being humiliated and sometimes means I get to cut the
line when colleagues call me over. But it also might be hurting my
career. See, sometimes I think I see the Dean of my college in that
same Starbucks and I worry he sees me and thinks I'm snubbing him.
But it could just as easily be any smart looking, middle aged white
dude. Guess one of these days I'll have to smack him on the back of
the head to find out if it's the Dean.
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