I don’t think I’m able to identify people by their eyes alone.

My impression is that fictional characters can do that. They’ll recognise long-lost children by their hazel eyes, estranged lovers by their amethyst orbs, old friends by their weathered dirt-brown pupils. I do not have this skill. I’ve barely even noticed the eyes of my dearest friends, except briefly to note that they have eyes. If you sat me down in an empty room with a desk, laid out before me an array of eye-photographs, and asked me to match them to each of my friends, I would probably do no better than chance.

I might be able to make some educated guesses. I have some rules of thumb—statistically, brunettes tend to have brown eyes and blondes tend to have blue eyes—but how many of my friends deviate from that pattern has completely escaped my notice. And if any of them somehow have an eye colour change, I doubt I’d pick up on that in the same way I’d register a new haircut. And I think I would surely notice unusual eye colours (red, orange, black, pink, none at all). But I definitely haven’t been observant enough of eyes that I can identify people by their eyes alone.

(“You have your mother’s eyes,” everybody says to Harry Potter.)

I wonder if this is one of those Universal Human Experiences You’re Missing Without Realising It. Some people have aphantasia (the inability to imagine things visually) or anosmia (the inability to smell) or colourblindness and don’t realise it because they get by in life just fine and nobody ever mentions it. I wonder if The Inability To Identify People By Their Eyes is like that. Maybe normal people can identify people by their eyes as readily as I can identify people by their voices, and I just don’t know.