Do I Know You?

There's so many days lately where I can't explain why my humanity membership card hasn't been revoked.

First issue, I don't recognise anyone. It's not a race thing. Even when I take my time I struggle to place the faces I see. Recognition surely is the first step to any level human interaction.
I suppose right now it's a challenging time for me to succeed at countenance comprehension. I live in a new neighbourhood, I'm riding a new train line, I take my dog to a new dog school and I'm working on a new office floor. I simply can't track that many new faces in my life, especially with 30 NBA rosters currently in flux. Worse, just when I think I'm starting to recognise people I come in on Monday and everyone's grown a beard or had a haircut and my confidence is shattered.

Second Issue, at some point in my life (I think when working at Woolworths) I decided that "How are you?" as a greeting was a useless platitude that didn't justify a full answer. For over a decade when people say to me "how are you?" I usually reply, "Hello," and leave it at that. Quite often these diads occur in transit. That's acceptable, I guess, when I pass someone in a corridor. When the form of transit is a recently-closed elevator it's a little different. Actually, this kind of strategy worked for me in Sydney, but in Adelaide it's not going quite as well.

Last issue, I feel like an absurdly high number of strangers seem to know me. This might be just an Adelaide thing, or maybe it's because my Mum had the biggest social circle I've ever seen when I was growing up. I'm not completely certain that all these strangers know me, but sometimes they do say to me, "How are you?" And sometimes they look at me like they expect me to recognise them. Although that could be the schizophrenia slowly developing.

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