And I’m 100% sure it’s not spam. She’s listed as a friend of a few old school friends/colleagues, has sent me a 'so how are you? message. Anyone been in this position, and what did you do? Or what would you do?
To make it all the more awkward, she also included an apology for being so nasty to me back then…maybe I should just say she should’ve tried harder and then I wouldn’t forget? 
Not exactly the same, but I’ve been poked and contacted by people who are friends of friends, people who think we might be distantly related, even some Dopers. I generally accept them, because typically I never hear from them again, and I don’t want to come off as cliquish.
Usually I’ll apologise and ask him or her how we know eachother. Sometimes it’s spam; sometimes they remind me. When they remind me I usually have an “oh yeah!” moment and feel better about it. I’ve had a person or two ask me how we knew eachother. I wasn’t offended or anything.
She might be confusing you with someone else. That’s happened to me before, some girl friended me and we had a few mutual friends, and I was perplexed because I had no idea who she was but she seemed to know me. Eventually I figured out who she had me confused with.
This has happened a few times. First, I check out their friends list and see if we know anyone in common. You may have to check back in a week or so, especially if they’ve just joined Facebook. I will also ask my friends if this is someone I know and have just forgotten (“Josh? Yeah, he was in our high school class! Remember, he was student body vice president”). If my close friends don’t know, then I start wondering. I don’t think I’ve ever been spammed on Facebook (though I have on MySpace many times). I just assume that they have either gotten me confused with someone else or they are someone I may have once known but does not fit into my life anymore.
I never know how to deal with friend request’s of people I met briefly at a wedding and the like. (Unless they are hot) Or my younger sister’s friends. I usually just ignore them, as I want to keep track of my actual friends, not everyone I know the name of.
Slight hijack, but I had a weird Facebook-related incident in real life last night. I was out at the Saturday night swing dance here in Vancouver, and wound up chatting with a guy about how I’d just moved back to town from Victoria and dancing and so on. Somehow the topic got on to Facebook, and he suddenly asked me if my last name was (my real last name). After I came up with a shocked/suspicious yes, he explained that he’d been looking through the group for Jungle Swing (the organization that runs the weekly dances and lessons in town), and I was one of the few people in the group he didn’t recognize, so the name stuck with him. :eek:
And yes, on the couple of occasions I’ve been contacted by someone I don’t remember, I check for mutual friends and see if my memory’s jogged.
Thanks for the suggestions. I think I’ll let it stew for a couple of days and see if I can remember anything, and if not, I’ll bite the bullet as Foldup Rabbit suggests. Annoyingly she’s got a limited profile so I can’t take a look through her friends, but it was the day after another person I hadn’t seen since I left that school got in touch, and she’s listed on his, so I suspect that’s where she found me.
I’m pretty sure she’s not getting me confused with anyone else - same school, same year, and I’ve got a fairly unusual first name. Mind you, she’s got a very unusual surname, which doesn’t ring any bells. She must’ve gotten married (I searched Myspace, and Google too, with no results at all)
I have to laugh when I get requests from pupils. Yeah, I don’t think so, you’re not seeing what I get up to in my spare time! :dubious:
Edit:
Don’t apologise, hijack away with similar tales, anyone!
I expect she’s mistaken you for ChimpBoy, or possibly BaboonJuvenile.
Heh, there were quite a few of the creatures at that school
I got a note from a sixteen year old girl with the same hometown (I don’t live there now) asking me if I ever had a daughter. Now, this could mean she thought she knew a girl that might have been my daughter (I don’t have a daughter), or she thought that I could be her father (not bloody likely for her listed age.) This was about a month or so ago, and I told her I’d have to have a lot more information from her before I answered any questions like that. I haven’t heard back from her yet.
Well, I took the coward’s way out (or the gambler’s, maybe), and replied without admitting I couldn’t remember her. But thankfully I figured it out, once I added her as a friend and could see her pictures.
She had me confused by the apology for being mean to me at school, because she wasn’t at all. Such is the weirdness of teenage minds, or memory, or something.
I’ve come to the realization that in high school, everyone was mean to everyone and no one fit in. Half the time, only the mean kid or the victim even noticed it.
I know no one really liked me, outside my 4 “friends”. Over the years, as I’ve recontacted everyone, I’ve noticed that everyone thought they were the ones no one liked. This goes for the entire school- the sports teams, the gifted kids, the goth kids, the preps, etc etc.
Back in the late 90s I was contacted by a woman I knew in college via a similar mechanism. We had an “internet romance” that ended when she insisted that I give up my friendship (it truly was a friendship) with a local woman.
She waited 3 years and contacted me again. This time we had a brief real-life romance. However she had some anger-management issues - just about everything pissed her off - and I decided life was better without her.
I had a real life instance of this. I was working as a contractor in a building and had been there for several months. As any typical guy, I tend to notice the women I work with probably a bit more than the guys. Anyway, one day I’m walking in from the parking lot and pass this one woman that I work with and give her the general “hiya” and go on in the building. I see her a few hours later and notice that she’s limping all of a sudden. Since I had just seen her walking normaly into work I asked her what had happened. You know…workplace nicety and all that. I also introduce myself a bit more formaly, since I don’t think we’d ever actually really met. So after a few minutes, just as I’m getting ready to walk away, she asks me if I was ever in so-and-so’s 6 grade class. I was stunned…turns out we had been in that class together. Normally I’d say that remembering people from elementary or middle school isn’t that big a deal, but I had only moved into that district that year…and moved to a different one a year later…so I was in the class with this girl for one year…we didn’t live close to each other or anything. Yet somehow she remembered my name and face. Who the hell looks the same from 6th grade? That was like…20 years ago or something? One of the few times in my life I was actually speachless. Especially since I didn’t really remember her. After thinking about it a while, I sort of kind of remember her…unless my mind is playing tricks on me because I should remember her.
On myspace I got friended and messaged by a guy from my graduating class… I have NO memory of this guy. He looked vaguely familiar. We exchanged some emails and I was hoping some bit of recognition would hit me. Nothing. He’s “definitely going to chat me up at the reunion.”
Weird.
Total and complete hijack: What in HELL does your location mean??? 
Please help!
Damn, I was hoping to advise you to write some very bad poetry about how tortured you are by the treatment she had given you in HS and post it to your page.
Oh, erm, it’s just a meaningless non-sequitur. I apologize to anyone who’s suffered sleepless nights pondering this enigma.