Brian's World

Cognitive Recognition

Grr to me. It turns out my ability to recognize people isn’t as great as I rely on it to be. I’ve always thought that I’m good at recognizing people and being like “hey, i know that person,” but names.. now that’s a totally different story, I can’t remember those for the life of me. Specifically there is one person that I can’t recognize, I’ve seen him three (?) times I think, no wait, four. Four times, but one was rather confusing, ok all of them have been rather confusing.

Let me just tell you the story so you can laugh at me. This morning dad gave me some dry cleaning for me to drop off at General Cleaners and asked me to see if there was anything to be picked up, ok I said.. no big deal right? Wrong! I went to General Cleaners after school to drop off the two shirts and I was waiting there while an elderly gentlemen picked up some suits (something related to church, not exactly sure). I wasn’t thinking to much of anything when I heard the door open, my instinct tells me to look to see who it is and I immediately get baffled. The guy I see reminds me of Katie’s dad. Now I didn’t want to stare so I went back to looking at the cool clothes spinny machine (the lady was going to 32) but I was trying to decide if that was actually her dad or was I just seeing things.

Now this wouldn’t have been the first time I’ve seen someone who looked like him, but this time I was more confident than others, close to 80% I think. I kept thinking of ways that might get him to recognize me, like I could call Katie, or send her a txt message, or even pull out my press pass with a tiger paw and my name on it, of course I didn’t have enough time as the lady called me up next. I managed to make a fool of myself with the receipt and starch, my dad always changes if he wants those things or not.. But I walked out, maybe I said have a nice day to that lady, maybe not.. things get blurred.

As I’m approaching the door I see a blue car parked in front of the bank with a beautiful driver… Katie! EEK… my first thought was ok, they are clearly at the bank. I start running fast, just get outta there before you get more confused. Katie shouts like “what are you doing here?” I said “Dry Cleaners” and she starts laughing or something… yupp, that was her dad alright.

By this time I’m back in my car and pull out to go get outta there. I get in the turning right lane to head to my house and guess who pulls up next to me… the blue car! I make a very modest wave because her dad was right there and on a cell phone? and I didn’t want to make a big roll down the window and start chatting scene. I pull out, problem solved, situation clear.

At this point I’m going over everything in my head to figure out where I went wrong and stuff. Well, first I should have done a better job recognizing her dad. I know I can recognize her mom but I need some work on her dad. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull that off sooner rather than later. Secondly, I should just say Hi next time; and if I make a fool of myself in the process so be it.

I think I have a new stratgy for recognizing him spefically which involves Hugh Laurie, and now that House is back on with new episodes (w00t w00t) it should get easier.

I decided wearing a name tag was not a feasable option.

But in the chance he reads this:

Sorry for not recognizing you at the cleaners today. Hopefully it won’t happen again.. me not recognizing you that is, and if it does I’m sorry in advance. Here’s what I probably would have said, “Hi”.. “How are you”… “Have a nice day!” [maybe a great day or good day or afternoon]. So again, sorry about that, I hope I didn’t come off as scared of you or anything because that’s not the case at all; hopefully you got a few laughs out of it. Have a great night! Oh yeah, thanks for raising such a super cool awsome daughter!

~~Brian

(Who’s working on recognizing people more)