More often than I care to admit, actually. What’s worse is when I confuse the person I’m talking to with someone else and in the middle of the conversation, just when I think I’m remember who this person is, I blurt out some detail and the person pauses, looks at me like I just landed (this too, happens more than I care to admit) and realises that I am a totally putz. Then it’s all awkward and I am backpedalling like … [insert metaphor here].
That has happened to me several times actually…
I have a horrible memory…
It just happened like 2 weeks ago too with a guy I used to work with 7 years ago… I think I played it off pretty well…
It used to happen when I ran into members of the martial arts club I attended out on the street in regular street clothes. We would have awkward moments trying to remember where we knew each other from – the problem was that we didn’t have the context of our white jammies.
Only once. I was walking outside a convenience store, and a guy says, “Tucker!” I look at him, and when he apparently saw I didn’t recognize him, said, “Isaac Boulware” (from high school). I gave him a knowing look, and said, “Wow! It’s been a long time.” We chatted about 10 minutes. Now, since I went to school with pretty much the same classmates all the way from 1-12, I knew a whooooole lot of my classmates, both older and younger. I absolutely did not recognize this name. I also didn’t recognize his face. I looked in all my annuals. Not a single picture of him. To this day I don’t have a clue who it was–but he obviously knew me. Other than being a lot older, I must look a lot like I did in high school (not a good thing, either–I was (must still be) one goofy looking MF). Twice in restaurants in the past six months people I went to school with saw me and spoke to me–and I was *absolutely clueless in recognizing them. Once they told me who they were, I was able to recognize them. But this first guy from a few years ago–I still have no idea.
*It’s amazing what the some facial hair, weight change, hair style change (and in once case a height change of a couple of inches) and a span of 25 years can do.
This has never happened to me. I went to three different high schools in two different states and Japan, and the nearest of those schools is about 800 miles away, so I don’t run into people from back then.
About a year ago, I did get an e-mail from the gal who was my date to the sophomore homecoming dance in 1986. She was even kind enough to include a photo of us at the dance, in case I’d forgotten her. She was very happy she’d tracked me down and wanted to chat. So she called me up one night and we talked for a half-hour or so, and I was surprised to find that, while she’d been somewhat bitchy back then, she is EXTREMELY bitchy now. Haven’t talked to her again.
I must confess that I’ve played the opposite role in this situation. I was in college, and was visiting my family back in my hometown for the Christmas holidays. On Christmas Eve, I went with my family to midnight mass, and who should I see sitting in a pew across the aisle but this fellow who I graduated with in high school. I can’t say we were the closest friends outside of school, but we were both honors students and so had almost all our classes together throughout junior high and high school.
It had been about five years since we’d graduated high school, and I was curious to see how he was doing. So after mass ended, I saw him outside, and decided to say “hi.”
Me: Hey, [so and so]…!
Him [look of complete bemusement on his face]: Who are you?
I felt like a complete idiot. I stammered my name, and then muttered something about having attended the same high school as I retreated back into the shadows, cursing my insignificance…
[I also have a more uplifting story about renewing contact after eleven years with another person from high school–the first girl I had ever been in love with, no less.]
I ran into somebody one spring quarter in college, and she gave me the “Hey, Ethilrist, how’s it going?” deal. It took me a few seconds to realize she was in a swim class with me in the fall quarter, so I said, “Hey, sorry, I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”
Ugh, I just did this to a girl a couple days ago. I remembered her, said hi, we chatted, I asked about her husband (who I’d actually been a little closer to in HS), made her promise she’d tell him I said HI, etc.
And then, on the way home I realized I never said my name and I got all paranoid that she’d actually had no idea who I was. Now you’ve got me worrying about it all over again. Thanks a bunch.
It happens to me. A lot. I probably come off as an arrogant sod who can’t be bothered to remember someone I probably saw a few times in the playground or classroom of yore.
I do have difficulty connecting names with faces, unless familiarity has hammered the link into my brain with 6 inch nails and a lot of repeating.
I smile, I nod, and hope like hell that I can pick up on a few visual and audial clues that’ll save my bacon. If not – well, I wing it.
Heh. When I swam at the pool on campus, one of the lifeguards would always greet me cheerfully, and I’d always smile and say “Hi!” in return. I thought she was just a really nice lifeguard.
The one day, one of my students asked me, “So, how was your swim this morning?”
I gave her a very surprised look, like, um, oh, hello, stalker!!! And she said, “Uh . . . I’m . . . the . . . uh . . . lifeguard?”
Ah! I explained that I leave my glasses in my locker . . .
One night in college, I asked the bartender for a pen to give some loser my phone number. (Only becomes a loser on this re-telling because he never called, wasn’t interested and was probably gay.) The bartender said something like, “okay but only if you give me your number too!” Drunk, I obliged without question. I went to this particular bar frequently to see bands my friends were in and was on a first name basis with this bartender, who was called “Chip.” Nice guy.
Several days or weeks later (I don’t remember what the time span was.), Chip called me. He wanted to know why I never spoke to him in Psych class. The honest truth was, I was generally either so stoned or so hungover, I didn’t speak to much of anyone until after sundown. I did not go to class for the social aspects. Until he asked me that, I had no idea that the bartender at the Union was the same “Chip” as the Chip in my psych class who always peppered the prof with tough questions.
I stammered a really dumb answer so Chip got the idea that I wasn’t really into him, and must have just given my number to him in a drunken stupor. Evidently I didn’t backpaddle quickly enough to let him know that I was interested in him – just not real quick on the uptake in social situations. He hung up and never called me again.
I bet he was the Man of My Dreams and I’d be happily married with a dozen children… if only I’d recognized that my bartender was in my psych class.
It was Abnormal Psych, btw. And no, it didn’t help much!
The opposite happened to me. El Hubbo and I were in a suburb of Atlanta (visiting for the Olympics) in a Piggly-Wiggly. In front of us in line was a girl I remembered from tenth grade (eleven years before) over in Germany.
“Katie Smith! Oh my God, I can’t believe it! It’s me, Gazelle! We were in high school over in Germany together!”
We talked for a couple of minutes and went along our merry ways.
Then El Hubbo dropped the bomb. “She had no idea who you were.”
I was stunned. But thinking back over the conversation, I could see he was right. That sucks.
