I Remember People by Smell and Footsteps

I'm a student. I've always been bad at remembering people's names — if I don't write a name down, it's simply not going to stick. But for some reason, I always assumed I was normal. I figured that's just how it works for everyone.

With faces, I don't think my case is that severe. Quite often I can tell who someone is just by looking at them — it's not like I need to hear their voice to know who I'm talking to. Women, though, I genuinely struggle with. With men, I rarely mix people up.

I hear that for some people with prosopagnosia, faces blur together like "shortcakes." I'm not at that level, but I have caught myself firmly believing that two different people were the same person.

I tried the prosopagnosia self-check on this site and scored 75. Apparently, when most people take it, the average is around 40. It's a self-report check, so some subjectivity is unavoidable — but I'd genuinely thought of myself as normal, so I guess this is what "you don't notice until someone points it out" looks like.

If you really want to know for sure, you'd need a proper assessment. Then again, it's not like getting tested makes it any better.

People talk about not being able to tell idols apart, but honestly? I don't think most people can either. I mean, they deliberately gather forty-eight people with the same type of face. The ones who can tell them apart are the special ones — and those special people are just what everyone calls the hardcore fans.

When I memorize people, I use all sorts of things other than the face. Hairstyle and clothes, first of all. Women especially change their hairstyles all the time, right? So when the hairstyle changes, I don't know who they are anymore. And then smell — I remember people by their smell. Smell matters a lot, actually. After that, body type and the way they walk.

Footsteps, too. I know my whole family's footsteps — just from the sound of someone coming up the stairs, I can absolutely tell who it is. Everyone's weight and shoes are different, after all.

The truth is, I can't remember nicknames either. But nicknames are still way better than real names. It's not that a nickname is inherently easier to remember, so — what is that? Maybe because they're short and easy to say, but I really don't know. At some point in the conversation we landed on the idea that maybe nicknames and names are stored in different places in memory. If that turned out to be true, that would be fascinating.

With names, too, once I've learned one, it stays with me for about a week. It's not like it evaporates in three hours. And if I look back through my old notes, it settles in again and comes back to me. When there's someone whose name I actually want to use, I can learn it if I try.

When I have to take in a big batch of names at once, I keep notes on my phone. For someone I've properly talked with, I'll write down things like which country they lived in and for how many years, roughly how many countries they've traveled to, where their family home is, the place they most want to visit right now — that level of detail. Because without looking, I simply don't remember.

The thing is, I sometimes find I've written about the same person twice, once near the top of the note and once near the bottom. If I organized it properly, one entry per person, there's probably a much better way to do this.

The interesting part is that I can't recall things on demand. It comes back to me out of nowhere while I'm doing something else. So that's when I add to my notes — after the fact, the moment a memory surfaces.

The ideal would be something where I just talk, and it automatically understands and turns it all into a table. Voice input exists, but in the end I still have to go back and clean it up myself — and while I'm writing one thing down, I forget the thing I'd just remembered.

All I've ever done is cope. It never occurred to me to build something myself. I just figured that's how things are.

But then — why is it only names I can't remember? Why are nicknames slightly easier? Now that I think about it, I really don't know. And if there's an actual reason behind it — well, that's kind of fascinating.