One odd thing that happens to me at comic book conventions is that I mysteriously lose my ability to recognize people. Even when I encounter someone I've known for twenty-plus years, I find myself staring at their badge to double-check who they are.
I think it's connected to a telephone habit of mine which can best be described by example. I'm calling my friend Joe who recently divorced a lady named Susan and married a lady named Betty. (This is a hypothetical case.) As I'm dialing, I remind myself that if a lady answers, I should address her as Betty, not as Susan. Then a lady answers and I suddenly think to myself, "Wait! Do I have them reversed?" And I start stammering, "H-hello…uh…" because I am momentarily afraid to address Betty as Betty, even though I know her name is Betty.
At a non-convention gathering, I have very little trouble recognizing and greeting people by name. At a convention though, dozens and dozens of folks I barely know say howdy to me and I start getting them confused with those I do know. Someone says, "Hi, Mark," and as an involuntary reflex, I instantly think, "Is this someone I'm supposed to know?" and my eyes make a desperate grab for their badge…even if the person is among my best friends. If, as occasionally happens, they're wearing a badge with someone else's name on it, I either address them as somebody else or freeze up because I sense something is amiss. This year in San Diego, a lot of people were wearing badges that were not clipped-on or pinned but were instead on a little lanyard around their necks. This made it easy for the badge to be backwards and, just my luck, about 85% of them were. That really throws me off.
All this is my way of apologizing to you if you were one of many people I ran into and immediately looked at your badge. I may or may not have recognized your lovely face but if I did, that rarely stopped me from eyeing the badge, just to make 100% certain before I spoke that the name in my head matched the person before me. It's not personal. It's just what conventions do to me.