DEAR MISS MANNERS: I’ve developmental prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, and can’t acknowledge any human faces. I work remotely in a career that doesn’t require me to work together straight with others. My husband watches TV and films with me in case I confuse the characters, and goes to events with me to assist me know who I’m speaking with.
I’ve been very open about my situation and my willingness to reply questions on it, and have made positive to tell all my buddies about it. However I’ve one pal who insists on exhibiting me images of individuals. She is going to maintain her telephone proper in entrance of my face and scroll via dozens of images of her son, his buddies, her husband’s household, buddies that I’ve by no means met, and so forth.
I’ve tried saying issues like, “Oh, is that Junior?” or “Is that the identical lady from the opposite photograph?” After a very grueling session of many, many images of her son’s highschool promenade, I even mentioned, “You recognize I’m face-blind, proper?”
However nothing has stopped this habits. Because of the isolating nature of my situation, I’ve a really small variety of buddies, and I don’t need to lose this particular person’s friendship. Are you able to consider one thing I can say or do to make her cease, with out offending her?
GENTLE READER: You’re probably not the one one with this query. It appears possible that everybody else this particular person has bored mindless would additionally welcome an answer.
Miss Manners is starting to marvel if there’s a medical situation that renders individuals unable to note that others run after they see them coming.
The well mannered solution to refuse to take a look at photos is to look away and say, “I’d a lot fairly you talked to me about it. Did your son inform you what highschool proms are like nowadays?”
