Entering the store, I quickly locate my four produce items (two red peppers, a zucchini, a head of romaine lettuce, and some bing cherries) and I'm heading across the store to find dental floss when I see her. She's smiling at me in the puzzled manner of someone who thinks she knows me, but isn't really sure. She looks vaguely familiar to me, too, so I smile as I walk past her and say hello.
I get the floss and get into line. She is in front of me. Crap. I don't remember her name.
"Hey NGS. What happened to you?"
I look down at myself. I don't look great and I'm sweaty and the bike helmet hanging from my belt loop should explain why, but what kind of question is that?!
"Uhhh..." Great. Now I'm stuttering.
I'm still trying to place this woman. How do I know her?
She proceeds to hold an entire conversation where I have little to do besides nod and smile and grunt. I am relieved when the slow cashier finally gets to her and unknown woman starts bagging her items and leaves me alone. She checks out, tells me it was good to see me, and leaves. I check out ($15 even!).
I put my bag in the basket on my bike and start to pedal away.
Lauren. Her name was Lauren. I knew her in my grad school days. She has lovely hair and wears skirts about six inches too long to be flattering. We don't share subfields, friends, or interests, but she's kind and polite and blandly nice.
I begin to wonder about all those people out there, people who remember me, people who have wrinkles in their brains devoted to memories of me, but people I just don't remember. I regularly get Facebook requests from people that I clearly went to high school with, but I just don't/won't/can't remember. (Yes, I deny those requests.) I feel incredible guilt about those people. They think I'm important enough to think about, but I just cut them out of my mind and move on. Should I feel guilt? Should I be flabbergasted at the clearly inferior quality of my own memory? Should I just forget this topic altogether?
Lauren. Her name is Lauren.
No guilt, darling!
ReplyDeleteI am the same way!
xoxox,
CC
I just call my similar lapses 'brain farts' and move on.
ReplyDeleteSome people have just trained themselves to remember people's names. I worked with kids and had to learn names fast. They usually stick in my head. I don't think of the person in between learning their name and recalling it later, but it's a handy trick.
I have those same people friending me on Facebook. It's very weird and awkward.
ReplyDeleteI always feel so awkward when those kind of meet-ups happen. I usually just state the obvious and say, "Remind me how I know you again..." :)
ReplyDeleteAlso - I think it's great that you bike to the grocery store.
stephanie@metropolitanmama.net
P.S. You really know how to tell a story! You create such vivid word pictures.
ReplyDeletestephanie@metropolitanmama.net
I have the same guilt thing going on.
ReplyDeleteThis is especially hard as I graduated with a class of 42 students, so at the time we all knew each other. Now, I have no idea who these people were.