Are you memorable? Not to your friends & family but to people you rarely deal with.
I called to place my ‘usual unusual’ Thanksgiving order. I started to tell her what I wanted, which include special instrux on where & how to deliver it & she cut me off by finishing it out for me. I call this place once a year & yet she remembered my order because it’s unique.
I had to call a lawyer’s office last week that I hadn’t dealt with in 8½ years; the admin/paralegal/whatever her title answered & I asked my generic question. She responded, “I thought we did that for you”. Now I get she probably got my name from CallerID but how the hell did she remember a case from so long ago? When I asked her, she stated, “Let’s just say some cases are more memorable than others.”
Sometimes. When I walk into a pilgrim hostel or bar/cafe on the Camino, I’m often recognized even if I was only there one time two years before. I don’t have extensive conversations with the folks working there, so I assume it’s due to my radiant beauty, dulcet tones, and politeness.
I regularly feel that more people remember me than I remember them. Not sure if it is because I am particularly memorable, or that I have a lousy memory for people I don’t interact with all the time. I generally suspect the latter.
I’m kinda tall, and when I talk about things I can be opinionated, so that might be a reason for someone to remember me.
Same. I routinely have awkward conversations with people who remember me, and address me by name, as I’m frantically trying to place who the hell they are and how i might have met them
Maybe this doesn’t exactly fit here but I came across this word a long time ago and it permanently sits at the periphery of my thoughts:
Sonder
noun
the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles:
2.In a state of sonder, each of us is at once a hero, a supporting cast member, and an extra in overlapping stories.*
There’s an IHOP where of the waitresses learned to watch for me stopping by every three months or so. They’re right down the street from my doctor’s office; if I’m not in a hurry to get home, I go there for my first meal after fasting overnight.
I’m a nondescript rather elderly fellow, of average build and size. Caucasian in a UK town where that’s the bulk of the population. I dress in unremarkable clothes from generic stores or even thrift shops. I don’t express any controversial opinions in public, just try to be normally polite.
But somehow people remember me…? I really don’t know why?
I’m short and need to have all of my pants hemmed, so during a period around 2008-2011 when I was buying a lot of new clothes, I went to a dry cleaner near my office fairly frequently for alterations. I’m not sure the last time I was there, but I know it was before 2015. In September of this year, I finally bought another pair of pants that needed to be hemmed, so I decided to check whether that place was still operating. As soon as I stepped up to the counter, the woman (whom I did not recognize at all) said, “It’s been a while since you’ve been in. You’ve lost weight.”
I had a wonderful lunch in a Polish deli in a small city about an hour from home that I rarely visit. The proprietors had limited English, and my server was their preteen daughter, who finally convinced me that whatever she brought out I would like. [She was right].
Twenty years later I was back in that town, and noticed an almost familiar sign on a different building, and decided to check it out. The young matron at the counter smiled ‘about time you came back - the usual?’ and brought out the same meal I’d enjoyed before.
No idea. I guess it depends on the interaction and frequency of encounters. One of my doctor’s entries in my record described me as a “pleasant 77 year-old male”. It made me feel inordinately good. I know that the staff at Walking Dead Manor like me, as I banter with them and let them know that I appreciate what they do.