I was working in the kitchen and one of the servers came back and said, “There’s someone here to see you.”
I went out to the dining room and to the table and there was a girl I did not recognize. I was confused. So was she. I told her my name. She told me hers. It turned out that she had been friends with my sister in preschool.
Also, it turned out she hadn’t asked for me at all. The server misheard her and thought she’d asked for “the girl in the kitchen” when she had actually wanted my co-worker, Earl.
I’m in a sort of one-of-a-kind position in my organization. So anyone who has ever had a meeting that includes my specialty knows who I am. I, on the other hand, meet dozens of people every week and I will have zero chance of remembering a random attendee at a meeting two months, or two years, ago.
So, when I introduce myself to someone I often get, "oh we’ve already met . . . "
When I lived in south Florida, I attended an event the night before a running road race. Also at the event were a number of good age group runners from central and northern Florida. Me and my girlfriend talked with some of them for a while, since they knew her good friend who lived in their area. A few months later, after moving to North Carolina, we ran into one of the guys and his wife at a race in North Carolina. They were vacationing in the area and thought that they would jump in a race. We chatted with them for quite a while at the post race festivities.
About 4 years later, I started grad school at U of Florida in central Florida. I met up with some local runners for a couple of months when the wife of one of the guys that I had been running with showed up. She thought that I looked familiar. We finally pieced together that I had met them at the south Florida event and again at the North Carolina race. Though I had run with the guy for a couple of months, neither of us connected the dots that we had met before.
Two different times, altho I was the one who remembered and the others didn’t.
First one: When I was in my last active duty command, there was a Lieutenant Commander who was a bit of a party animal. About 10 years later, I was out of the Navy, working for the Navy as an engineer and the aforementioned party animal was an admiral who was the head honcho of our command. He came thru the engineering spaces introducing himself, and I mentioned we’d met. He kinda blew it off with “I meet all kinds of people” and I mentioned the specific squadron. Of course he remembered me then - there were only 2 women in the outfit at the time. He’d morphed form party animal to a bit of a jerk.
Second: Working at a different Navy command, I was sent to a training course and one of the instructors was a retired Naval officer who I’d served with in the Pentagon about 20 years earlier. I don’t think he remembered me - I was way far down in the food chain in those days - but he did remember a couple of the others when I mentioned them.
A guy I work with at the city knew me fairly well when we first met a couple years ago. Turns out he was best friends with my friend’s little brother. In the mid-90s my friends and I had started a “teen club” and the little brother & buds would tag along with us sometimes. I don’t remember this guy whatsoever, even though I remember the little brother and some of their other friends. I really didn’t know any younger kids at school if they weren’t in band with me - it’s not like we had occasion to mingle.
Kinda lame story, since we grew up in the same area and knew some of the same people so of course we’ll know each other somehow. I’m just sort of honored that this kid managed to remember me at all.
A guy I work with at my current newspaper was working at a different newspaper several years ago when I interviewed there. Of course, given how poorly that previous interview went – crummy directions caused me to be late, and apparently I was not dressed spiffily enough for the occasion – I can’t say that I had a whole lot of incentive to commit his face (or the entire experience, for that matter) to memory. Thankfully, he was not present on the day that I interviewed where we work now. Not that he particularly held anything against me, but I think that being reminded might’ve thrown me off my game.
I grew up in Toronto, in a nice, quiet, residential neighbourhood with lots of kids.
When I was about ten years old, a new family moved in around the corner. They had a couple of kids, who would play with us. The younger, William, was about five years younger than me; but we were all ages, so William fit right in. We all grew up together; and as we got older, went our separate ways. High school and university tend to do that to kids of different ages.
Let’s go forward forty years, give or take. I’ve moved to Alberta, and I have an appointment with a client at the client’s office. Except the appointment is scheduled for after normal office hours. I don’t care; it’s business, and I could make a few dollars. But I will have to sign in with the security guard in the lobby.
Me: Hi, I’m here to see Mr. Smith at ABC Company.
Guard: Sure. What’s your name? I’ll call up.
Me: [My name.]
Guard: Hey, I knew a guy with that name when I was a kid. Just for fun, did you used to live on _____ Avenue in Toronto?
Me: Yes…?
Guard: Oh hell, I’m William _____, from around the corner!
Yes, it really was William, from the old Toronto neighbourhood, working as a security guard in Alberta. We spent a few moments catching up, but I did have an appointment, after all. Anyway, I’ve met up with William a few times at the local sports bar, and we’ve talked about the old neighbourhood, what happened to our childhood friends, and so on.
I rowed with a university rowing club in Chicago in 1977. The boat was filled out with some non-university types, including the husband of another grad student.
In 1996, I went to the Olympics in Atlanta. My buddy and I had some tickets to the earlier crew heats.
Yup. I happened to start talking with a guy who was seated nearby. When I mentioned that I had been at the Northwestern Sprints in 1977, he said he had been there, too. After a couple more questions, we figured out that he had been there indeed…seated in my boat four seats behind me.
Chatted up a girl in a bar in the Hamptons and as I dialed the number she was giving me so she would have my number, her name came up on my iPhone. I guess I had chatted her up before. Whoops.
My wife and I discovered, way after we were married, that we had both been at the same Ellen DeGeneres show at college, most likely just a row apart. We didn’t actually meet until about seven years later.
In my first year at university, I made a friend named Anne in the dorms. At one point, she introduced me to Nina, a friend she’d made in one of her classes. At one point, Nina asked me if I’d lined up an internship yet. The conversation went something like this:
Rysto: Oh yeah. I have a job lined up in Ottawa.
Nina: Oh, nice.
Rysto: Yeah, it’s really nice because I’m from Ottawa, so I can just live with my parents to save money.
Nina: Looks at me like I’ve grown a second head.
Nina: … Yeah, I know. We went to high school together. You sat next to me in Calculus.
Ooh, I have a contribution! Nine years ago, I was in the checkout line at the grocery store, and the guy behind me started hitting on me. He didn’t seem to have recalled ever having seen me before, but he looked a bit familiar to me, and he had a British accent, which not a lot of people in my area have. Then suddenly I remembered, and I cut in and said, “Dude, I’ve been to your house before.” Several months earlier, I had been looking to move away from home, and the man I was talking to had posted an ad on Craig’s List saying he had a room available for rent. I had gone to his house and looked at the room, then ultimately decided not to rent it.
Then, a week or two later, I saw a missed call from this gentleman. He had saved my number, or saved my email, or something. At any rate, I hadn’t given him my number at the grocery store, but he had gotten a hold of it anyways and asked me out on a date. We went out on a couple dates, but I had an ex who wasn’t leaving me alone and was becoming threatening, so I had to call things off. I doubt we would have worked out long-term, anyways, so I didn’t bother to give him a call when things calmed down with my ex.
There was another woman on the bus when I was going home from work, and I knew I knew her from somewhere, but where? Every once in awhile I’d glanceat her, trying to figure it out, and she seemed to be doing the same to me. Eventually we nonverbally acknowledged that we knew each other from somewhere, and just as I was about to get off I realized she was from my dance class. When I passed her she said, “Hey, I didn’t recognize you with clothes on.” You know, if I’d been the one to initiate that conversation I think it would have been more like, “I didn’t recognize you with your hair down,” but oh well.
This may well have amused our fellow commuters but I don’t know because I got off fast and attempted to disappear into the crowd.
I did give her a bit of a bad time about it at the next class. Hey, a leotard and tights count as clothes IMO.
I’m told people working in a local mall used to say that to my dad fairly frequently. He was a letter carrier and wore a uniform and delivered to the stores in that mall. My mother thought it amusing.
When I was in college, I happened to find a directory of a summer program I was going to and discovered the name of the girlfriend of a friend of mine. She agreed she was there, but neither of us remembered each other, though it’s likely our paths crossed.
Years ago, in another life, I met a prostitute who, after a bit of conversation, I realized i had held as a baby when i was a teenager. There was even pictures of me with this girl in my arms as a baby online. It turns out she was the daughter of a high school friend who was a couple years older than me. Small fucking world. And no, I didn’t “do” anything with this girl. Too close to home lol.
I was working in Yemen at the time in a oil production plant. Over 500 people were on site at any one time. My job had me interacting with pretty much everybody on-site, but there was one fellow who, when I saw out of the corner of my eye, had my brain playing tricks on me superimposing images on him as if there wasn’t something quite right with what I was seeing.
So, one day I’m sitting at his desk working on his computer and mentioned something that happened 20 or so years earlier when I had been in the army, he stops me and say, “When the hell were you in the army?!”. I told him and he immediately said that he was in the same company. My brain had recognized him earlier and had been trying to tell me that the brown coveralls he was wearing should have been green combats instead!
Two guys from Canada who had served together meeting randomly on the other side of the planet.
