I wonder if you have some degree of face blindness. It’s not a dig, I myself don’t recognize my waitress when she steps away from the table. OTOH, my graduating class in high school had less than 100 people, so I have better odds of recognizing them now given I had fewer than average faces to memorize.
Heh. I was thinking something similar. Any classmate I last saw 30 years ago would have been in the second grade at the time.
Update: surprisingly not bad. For the most part, I recognized the folks I had most wanted to see, and everyone was bending over backwards to show their nametags and saying their names “Hi, WordMan, it’s Joe Bloggs!” - so we were all on best behavior.
I had a couple of those “who are you again?!” moments but nothing too awkward. There was one guy who walked up to me and said “hey! WordMan, remember what you said about my hair?” Umm, no - I didn’t remember the guy at all. I stumbled and he said “no worries - it’s me, Joe Bloggs, and you said I had a ‘hair helmet’!!”
:smack:
He thought it was hilarious and enjoyed it - I was thinking “oy - no recollection but I still am embarrassed.”
Someone had taken a pic of the two of us and a handful of other folks right about then. When it was published on Facebook, all of us were named, except for him - and he was in the middle of the picture! That was when I thought “ah, perhaps he is that guy - the one folks don’t pick out.” I pinged the person in FB and shared his name…
I graduated HS in 1980, and while my facial features haven’t changed, my hair is short now and I wear glasses. Yet, surprisingly, people do recognize me, and not only in the context of reunions–it’s happened in parking lots, in stores, in restaurants, etc. I suppose it could be that my figure is pretty much the same as it was then, just about 10 pounds heavier, and, as other posters have said, someone’s voice and the way they move are also cues.
Other than my best friend–we are still friends and see each other regularly–I don’t recognize really anyone. Part of that is that a lot of the girls have gained a lot of weight, and their hair has either darkened naturally or is now dyed. As for the guys, if they generally look like they used to, I’ll remember them once they give their name. If they’ve gone bald and paunchy, I doubt I’d recognize them unless, say, they have a distinctive voice or some other feature, like an unusual eye color.
I probably would recognize the face. I’d stare at you Hard. (Sorry, I’m a little weird, socially.) But unless my life/livelihood/sex life* depended on knowing your name at one time: I probably didn’t know it thirty years ago, and today the odds aren’t good.
Seriously, due to the name thing, I’m socially weird. Unless I’ve needed to call you by your name for a couple of days, I’m going to be sketchy on it. But I do remember your face. I’ll know you’re the awesome drummer from that band we played with in '90, that we subsequently played with on and off for two years. But both your and your band’s names will escape me at the time it would be most useful to remember them.
I attended my 25th, just because I happened to be in my hometown when it was held. I doubt that I’d have made a special trip to go. I found that if I closed my eyes and listened, I recognized almost everyone. But with eyes open, it was tough. I had to try to reach back and remember the moms and dads and sometimes I could figure a person out because they’d grown to look like one of their parents.
I just remembered in another thread that this is would be my 30th reunion from high school. I hated it so much that I didn’t keep any of the yearbooks and while I have a vague memory of the names on the graduation program, I wouldn’t recognize most of the people. I had a few close-ish friends whose pictures I have so I might be able to place them. This thread is making me want to get into Facebook out of morbid curiosity!
Yeah, three decades. That can change people a LOT. There are probably some folks I knew in high school that I’d still recognize and others that I’d need help with. Probably depends on just how much the other person has changed in the intervening time.
Very unlikely. But I’m terrible with recognizing people anyway. If a woman changes her hairstyle (especially the color) there’s a very good chance that I won’t recognize her. People are always saying that babies look like their parents and yet I don’t usually start seeing similarities until the teen years. Not too long ago, I met back up with an acquaintance from high school. I would not have recognized her, though I guess I can see a “family resemblance.” (And she even had the same hair color and still the same basic weight as when I knew her in school.)
Something in my brain is just not wired correctly when it comes to faces, I guess.