Note: This post may need a lot of explaining to take place. Any claims I make can be substantiated. This is something I have been able to do for a long time. I did not entirely trust it in the beginning, although I wanted to. I do now. If I only happened to be right a couple times then it would have been dismissed as coincidence. I don't really know how my brain does it and I may never figure it out completely. I do have a theory but I am saving it for my book. That still does not make it any less of an oddity. On with the show!
Just like Bender said in "The Breakfast Club" everyone has a special talent, everyone can do something. I can do a whole lot of things with my brain concerning memory, but nothing is as unique as what I am able to do with people and their faces.
It all began when I was watching a movie with my dad. We were watching an older movie and I said to him something like "Hey isn't that insert actor name here?" He told me that I must be mistaken. I told him that I felt pretty strongly that it was who I thought it was. He disagreed with me. Wanting to prove him wrong I went over to the computer and looked on IMDB to see if I was correct. I was. He had to come over and see for himself. He was shocked. He asked me how I knew. I told him I couldn't really explain it to him, but I just knew, deep down in my gut, I just knew. This would happen a few more times. We began to put money on it. He always lost. This built up my confidence a lot.
I mean let’s look at the facts here. The movie in question was made before I was alive. I have very little motivation to look up every actor who is still around and see what they looked like 20-30 years ago. He, on the other hand, had been alive and had possibly seen other movies that the actor in question had been in since the movie in question. How could he not have recognized him? After thinking about this for a while I came to the conclusion that some mechanism deep in my subconscious is able to add and subtract age to faces, even if I have never seen what the person looked like when they were younger. This is done with astounding accuracy.
The only way I can try to relate this is with an example involving kittens (good choice, right?) Say that you just brought home a nice fluffy kitten from the shelter. I’m not saying this works for me on animals, so just bear with me. Owning the kitten you see it almost every day. The little fluffer is there pawing you in the face when it is time to wake up, cuddling with you as get ready for bed and every moment you are home in between. You have a friend who comes over to see your new kitty when it is only a couple weeks old. The friend then returns a couple weeks later and remarks at how big it has gotten. You don't really notice the change because you have been observing it grow each day and each small amount does not register in your mind. You do agree that it has in fact grown. Unless you have way too much time on your hands you do not take pictures every week of your kitty's progress. If you had been then you would definitely notice the changes. It just took someone else to point out what should have been obvious. The kitten you have been raising the last few months is now a cat.
My brain acts as the person who owns the kitten and mentally tracks the growth of the kitten every day, without realizing it. My brain also is the friend who notices that the kitten has grown up and become a cat. It is the friend who knows this by comparing what the kitten looked like before to what it looks like now. The friend was simply not around enough to see the slow progression but it knows the same animal is in front of it. This may seem simple but it is very complex when taken to the level my brain does.
I will not call it a photographic memory because that would mean knowing every single line of a persons face and being able to describe that person accurately for some sketch artists to draw. This memory for me only applies, with superb accuracy, to faces. I can see people that I have not seen for a very long time, the longest was about ten years but I was only six at the time, and instantly recognize who I am looking at as someone I know. I may not always remember names but the face will never lie to me. I also remember the things that we used to talk about and the circumstances of our interaction. I get a lot of blank faces when describing to people events they partook in years past.
This has also turned into a game for me and others around me when we're sitting around bored at parties. I can pick someone out in the room and compare them to someone that I have, usually a celebrity, in my "Database of Faces" and voice my opinion as to who comes up. If we're lucky than there is more than one person and the game can continue. It is best not to disagree with me here; you are going to be wrong. I typically get a reaction of "Oh my gosh! You're right! It does look just like so and so". It’s funny to see their faces at my revelation.
I have been told by people that I should work for the FBI or casino security. The facial recognition software that is now in place keeps me from doing so. If only I was born forty years earlier...
I think that the way it works it that my brain takes a face and, subconsciously, puts it into the memory bank. I think though, that this only really works when I have some type of interaction with the person in question, some sort of quick memorable event or a combination of the two. When the person is again interacted with my brain compares the memory inside to what they looked like before. I will always know if you have gotten a hair cut, even if I have not seen you in two weeks and you got it the day after I saw you last (giving it time to grow back). My brain just tells me there is something different and that thought is put outward by my mouth.
I don't know how to explain it better than that. So is my memory photographic like people tell me or not? Could it be what I usually call it; "Facial Photographic"? Is there even such a thing in existence? Whatever it is I feel that it can't possibly be a common thing because I don't know of a lot of people that can do it. The freakish part is that it is only one system in the confines of my brain that works different than yours. Trust me, there are more. I know I probably left some things out, but that is the great thing about these blogs; you can edit them!
As always, let me know what you think.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment