Yep, this happened to me a couple of years ago. Pushing a trolley round the supermarket in my home town, this nice-looking chap comes up to me smiling and says ‘hey yooooo, how are you doing!’
I give him the freeze, then realise he genuinuely thinks he knows me. He saw me cogitating and it was awful, his cheery face just fell into his boots.
I apologised and pretended to remember him and he perked up a bit, but I had to have a five minute conversation to get enough clues as to his identity. He was the first boy in school I ever kissed, and I never ever thought I’d forget someone like that.
I really wasn’t expecting someone else to beat me to recalling an anecdote!
I too went to 3 different highschools, none of them in the same place I live right now. Makes running into people from highschool that I can’t remember rather a longshot :).
Interestingly enough I started getting e-mails from a secret admirer from my highschool in Canada about a year after I’d come back, it was kinda nice to realise that all that time in highschool I was moping cause I didn’t have the nuts to ask out the girl I was interested in there was someone else doing the same thing about me! Never found out who she was though that’s probably just as well :).
Generally I try to avoid people I vaguely remember but once I couldn’t avoid it - it turned out bad.
I was never a socialite in high school and I’ve always been bad with matching names to faces. Alas, I seem to be one of those people that everybody remembers (at least in my mind!).
I was delivering pizza about 4 or 5 years after high school. I went up to the house and a woman answers the door and says “Fredge! remember me? - Cathy”. Being slow on the uptake, I reply “Cathy Jones?” Her gaze turned icy - “No, Cathy Smith!”. It was a long few moments standing there waiting for her to gather her money to pay for the pizza.
It happened to me this past Sunday actually. I knew exactly who she was whilst she was approaching me but I quickly decided to pretend that I didn’t recognise her (I have no clue as to why I did this - perhaps because she was annoying in high school and I didn’t like her very much). We exchanged numbers and I hope I don’t hear from her again. And I hope my acting was good.
But I usually prefer to quickly change direction when I realise that I’m walking towards someone familiar I hate that “So… what have you been upto?..NO! really? That’s awesome” crap talk.
I was in my college library many years ago, and a person across the table from me looked really familiar. I kept glancing up to see if I could remember how I knew her. After a while I noticed she was doing the same thing. Finally we each admitted to the other that she looked familiar and we started recounting most of our lives’ stories in the hope of finding some place, organization or activity that we had in common. We were unable to come up with a single place we had both been. I never saw her again.
Another completely unrelated story: I was in the supermarket and a tall young man with a wife and small child addressed me by name. I had not a clue who he was. Turns out he was someone who had been one of my students when he was in 7th grade. I think he was surprised I didn’t recognize him. Well, gee, last time I saw him he was maybe 5’ 2", and didn’t have a beard…
I’m horrible with names. Took my mom out to dinner last week, a woman comes up and talks to my mom and then starts talking to me. Blah Blah Blah DeVena, you really need to come by the house next time you come up country to see your mom. I didn’t have a clue. Even after she left, and Mom tells me who that was - clueless. So Mom tells me where she lives. “You mean the one with the goats?” Yep - yet another reason I live in the city.
I also spent an entire lunch with my friends, fielding hateful looks from this woman at another table. I didnt’ know who she was. She kept glaring at me, and rolling her eyes… Everyone commented on her, and she got up at left in a huff. As she flounced away, she made this icky snorty sound - and I immediately placed her. She was a psycho old roommie, I lived with her about a year and could not recognize her 5 years later. Until the snort. That snort lives in my nightmares to this day.
This happened to me last year when I was in one of the local Jewish book stores. I was looking through the shelves while Mrs. KVS was buying something or other.
A young bearded guy came up to me and said hi. I said hi back. Then he started telling me that he was recently married, and that he and his wife were leaving in a few days for Bnai Brak, a town in Israel. He even introduced me to his wife.
I had absolutely no idea who this guy was. I simply answered to be polite. He and his wife eventually paid and left the store. I asked Mrs. KVS if she knew who it was, and she had no idea.
I went over to the cashier, and asked if the guy who had just paid had used a check or credit card. The cashier said yes, so I asked the name.
Oh boy! It turns out that it was someone I had known for years. :smack: I baby sat for his siblings while his mother was pregnant with him. He grew up attending the same synagoge I did. Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen him since his high school graduation, and he didn’t have a beard then.
I felt so bad, because he and his wife have been living in Israel since that time, and had no way to tell him how sorry I was.
A bouncer at a bar I used to frequent (while underage I admit) insisted calling me Brian. Talked with me as if we were old pals. For the hell of it I went along with charade. Apparently “Brian” was of legal age so I was golden.
I have the disadvantage of apparently looking the same now as I did when I was 4 years old. People would recognize me from junior school and star conversations. Luckily if they were friends they new I was eccentric and so forgave me not remembering there names. Now I’ve moved country this is no longer the problem that it was.
I have an identical twin sister, so THAT’S REALLY awkward-- I run into people she was good friends with in college (she went to school in the state in which I now live) or think they were and I have no clue and have to convince them that I am not her. Or someone I absolutely do not know walks by smiling broadly at me “HI!” and I’m like “uh. . . hi?” and they frown and I later wonder if my sister (heh) has just snubbed a friend.
I’m sorry to say that my friend and I used to go up to people and pretend we recognized them. Whomever could keep the cnversation going longest ‘won’. Childish, rude, mean, yes, I know. We were young and thought it was great fun, a sort of performance art we’d tell ourselves. So maybe it isn’t you, maybe someone else is pulling our little stunt.
I can’t remember people’s names worth a darn (irony? karma?) but my mom is fantastic. She can remember the names of students she taught forty years ago, and hasn’t seen since they were fifth graders.
A co-worker and I coincidently both got tickets for the last game at the old Commisky Park. When we compared tickets, we discovered that my wife and I were going to be sitting in the next row directly behind her and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend and I had never met. She filled me with alot of facts about him from about 10 years before; i.e., his dog’s name, the kind of car he had, where he worked, etc. About half-way through the first inning, I suddenly tapped him on his shoulder and said "My God! John Smith, it IS you! What’s it’s been … about 10 years? He played along as if he knew me and I just kept pumping the b.s. at him - Do you still have your dog Fido? Remember when we used to go partying in your Cutlass, etc… Every once in a while, he’d lean over to my co-worker and say something like “I have no idea who this guy is!” This went on for about six beers and seven innings before his girlfriend and I couldn’t keep from laughing anymore. Fortunately, he had a good sense of humor about it. That or he was too drunk to care about it anymore.
I cannot remember a single person I went to high school with. I feel bad, but I console myself with the fact that I haven’t seen a single one of them since high school. I have a few college buddies I keep in touch with, though.
But enough about me. Did it seem like she believed you?
Me too! And even more so when I look like shit. Why can’t I ever run into someone I know when I am dressed to the nines? No, I always have to run into someone when I am sporting a negative 10. It just kills me.
I must be the only evil person here. I HATE talking to people that used to know me, especially ex-coworkers and classmates. I always pretend like I don’t know who they are, even when I do (I have a freakishly good memory so usually I know them). I love it when they’re sitting there going “Aren’t you Jin???” and I’m staring at them like they’re nuts and going “I think you’re thinking of someone else, I’ve never seen you before and my name’s Sarah…” Freaks them out, it does. Nothing like making someone question their own memories.
Back in the early 90’s, I often ran into people who remembered me from places I hadn’t been, doing things I hadn’t done.
I finally decided that there must have been somebody living in my own hometown, going to the same out-of-town college, and shopping at the same grocery store, who looked just like me. He was apparently a friendly fellow, too.
These witnesses were always store clerks and other “casual encounter” people, so nobody ever learned my doppleganger’s name. Very creepy.
I hate that “So… what have you been upto?..NO! really? That’s awesome” crap talk.