prosopagnosia I

The monsters and I were in the grocery store. They were looking at reduced-price sticky eyeballs and plastic spiders, while I was snarling at them to hurry up. That's when a man came around the corner, flanked by a couple of teenage kids. He came right up to me and said, "I might never have the chance to see you again, so I just want to say, thank you for the way you took care of my mother."

That was nice.
That never happens to me.
The problem: I had no idea who he was.

I have trouble with faces - serious trouble, like I can meet the same person ten times and still believe I've never seen them before. It's a terrible handicap. In the hospital I'm always ending up on elevators with complete strangers who fix their eyes on me urgently and say things like, "So, have you seen the CT yet? Does Dad have cancer?" This is why I try to take the stairs.