Admittedly I Don’t Get Out Much but I have only once in my life seen someone IRL with the ashes–a guy at a gas pump well over 20 years ago.
I don’t ever remember seeing it in school, but some people at my work had the ashes on Wednesday (government building).
Work, yes. School, no.
The first time I remember seeing it was as a teenager at a part-time job, I thought a co-worker just had a smudge on her forehead so I mentioned it to her. I was embarrassed of course, although she was very nice about it.
At least you didn’t lick your thumb and then wipe it off. 
I’ve always had the impression that it was strictly a Catholic thing. The Protestant church I was brought up in definitely did not do it and I’ve never seen any non-Catholic friends or acquaintances with it on their foreheads. Of course it’s possible that when I did see someone with ashes I just assumed that they were Catholic.
I was watching MSNBC this past Wednesday and noticed that several of the talking heads had ashes.
I’ve seen it off and on throughout my life. It’s background “noise” to me, like people wearing crosses, Sikhs wearing turbans, Muslims wearing hijabs, tattoos…
The college where I work is connected with the Franciscans, so I see them every year. The chapel is actually right above my office.
As had been said, common in Chicago.
The one instance that struck me as a tad odd was when I was giving oral argument in the 7th Circuit Ct of Appeals, and the presiding judge had ashes on his forehead. Had no bearing on the case I was arguing, but I guess this wacky nontheist prefers my courtrooms free of blatant references to religions - whether general or specific.
Yeah, us Catholics aren’t known for turning our nose up at the booze. That’s a Protestant thing.
When i grew up/went to school and started my career in western Pennsylvania it was relatively common.
In Minnesota it seems to be decidedly less so. I did see a couple people with the ashes this year, but my internal reaction was “huh, i haven’t seen that in a while!”
I’m not Catholic, but a majority of my work friends are. I saw a bunch wearing crosses on Wednesday. It’s very common at my workplace, in part because we have a large Filipino population.
Well this definitely explains what I overheard a coworker saying this morning. Something along the lines of “…can’t even wear some ash on his face while they let people walk around wear damn towels on their head?” So…that was nice. But now it makes more sense. Don’t agree with what happened but I can see it’s rousing up a certain group of people.
It wasn’t until several years into my career as a college prof that I started seeing them.
The first time was student in the front row and I started to mention something and then … oh, yeah, it’s a Wednesday in the right time of year.
One of my fellow profs sometimes got the ash. I remember sitting at a lunch table when one of our foreign profs pointed out to them they had something on their forehead, so it was Religion Explanation 101 time.
I really don’t remember ever seeing them as a kid. We had Catholic kids that rode our school bus to the Catholic school near ours, too.
My new coworker took a long lunch on Wednesday, and when she came to my office there was a smudge on her forehead. Fortunately I connected the dots and realized she was Catholic and it was Ash Wednesday so she’d gone to church while away before I said anything.
I was at BSU back in the late 70’s - early 80’s. Lots of students did the ash thing, but it was a smudge instead of a cross. I don’t remember seeing it in high school, but I loved the fish sandwiches we had on Friday. I taught high school in south GA for 26 years, and don’t remember a single smudge or ashy cross among the students.
Not a cross in any Protestant Church i know of, except perhaps Episcopalians. Mostly it’s just a smudge.
And yes, I remember a few kids with one, and I didnt know what it was.
I will never forget the first time I saw people with ashes on their foreheads. I never saw them (or, if I did, never took notice) during my 8 years of elementary school (there would have few or no Catholics in my school as there was a parochial school nearby). Then I went to HS, which I used the subway to get to. The first year I saw not one, but a number of people with a smudge on their foreheads. I had no idea what it was about and I thought I was losing my mind. But it went away the next day and eventually, somehow, I found out what it was. In my nearly 40 years of teaching, I cannot recall students–or colleagues for that matter–with ashes, but I might have seen and ignored it since it was no longer mysterious.
It just depends on the skill of the pastor. Our current minister gives a nice full cross. I’ve had others where it was pretty unrecognizable. In the United Methodist church they make the mark of the cross on your forehead, but who knows what it’ll look like when they’re done.
I only was two at work this year. When I was a kid, it seemed like every single one of my classmates had ashes, and so did all the teachers, it being a Catholic grade school and all.