I’m about 15 or 16, outside, walking to a friend’s house, past the elementary school I went to. A guy on a bicycle across the street calls my name. I don’t recognize him. He says something like, “It’s me, Jeff, from kindergarten!”
How the fuck did he recognize me, from across the street and so many years later?
My answer to that is “have we slept together?”
Make them feel that forgettable!
Thought came about after meeting with a big group of old friends from college. One I wasn’t very close with had a new girlfriend. After we shook hands she asked if I remembered her. I didn’t but apparently we had gone on a tinder date 5ish years ago. I have zero recollection but I was doing a lot of tinder/hinge dates at that time. The guy uncomfortably told me several times throughout the night that its not a big deal and hes not mad. He was very clearly not happy about it and it was very clearly a big deal for him lol.
Ask him out on a date to even the scores.
Not a bad idea but he’s not really my type and a don’t think my lady would appreciate it anyway.
Please return with updates
Always start with “Nice to see you” not “Nice to meet you”. Saves insult from injury 100% of the time.
Strong advice
“I think we’ve met before, but my name is Sosa just in case.”
That also solves the problem of getting their name again. Though I will still forget it in about six microseconds.
There it is.
I don’t think so. When you reach a certain age, it’s incredibly difficult to remember everything. I work in marketing. I’m making a rough estimate, but I’ve shook hands with at least 100,000 people (across twenty years of business conferences).
If I made quite the impression on someone to say that, my response is to show delight and apologize! I usually start with, “Ah I’m very sorry! Please, remind me of the time and place?”
Regardless of how they answer, I usually pivot to expanding the conversation. Let’s talk about “the now”. How are they now? Are they enjoying the event/location? What’s new that might be of interest?
Yes working in sales this is near impossible. Meeting hundreds or thousands of people a year and then expecting to remember them again years later after having only met them once.
I have some prosopagnosia (face blindness), so this happens to me too much. Can cause a lot of social anxiety. And it’s made me look like a huge asshole sometimes when I’ve seen someone I know, outside of the usual context (at a grocery store instead of work). It’s a pain in my ass
I’m not sure if you’ve already heard this a bunch, but it needs said often for anyone who has this experience:
People without face blindness constantly struggle to recognize and remember faces. The idea that most people recognize anyone and everyone they’ve previously met (and remember their names!) is a complete myth.
I’ve gotten really good at remembering names and faces though practice and techniques like writing down everyone I meet in a notes app, and I still have like a 60% success rate on second encounters after more than a week.
My solution for the other 40%? If I’m not totally confident someone is new to me, I introduce myself with “Hi! Apologies, have we met?”
Works great.
It’s good to mention, because often people will say “I’m really bad at remembering faces too!”, and it has kinda stopped me from mentioning it to anyone who isn’t very close with me already
I was dating a girl once, and she cut her hair short after about a year into our relationship. She came to surprise me at work, and I just stared at her blankly, wondering what this “customer” wanted. Until she said “hello?”, and I immediately recognized her voice
I’ve come to understand that my brain just doesn’t process faces the same, I recognize traits instead (a natural way to cope). I can recognize people from how they walk better than most, but the face by itself doesn’t really trigger any recognition. Hard to explain, but it’s a little more pronounced than just being bad at remembering faces
That’s the line scammer will use and did use. I once got a call that basically goes in that direction. Turn out, it’s a very common tactic used by scammer at one time. And after they asked you that, they will make you guess, and then will take the first name you come out with.
So, don’t feel embarrassed for saying “No”.
“Are you someone worth remembering?” is probably more embarassing
I tam very forgiving of this stuff but I’m very honest and blunt. I’ve had someone say, “nice to meet you,” and I’ve had to respond, “we’ve met twice before.” If they seem flustered I’ll tell them it’s fine, it was brief, crowded, etc.
The weird thing is for me because my facial recognition is immaculate but memory isn’t always the best. So sometimes I see people and I know them but have no idea why. Did I see them at my public facing job? Did we go to college together? Is it a random person I passed in the grocers? 🤷♀️
Happens to me regularly, thanks to ADHD and a horrendous memory for faces.
My most embarassing memory is from my 2nd day at Uni, sitting next to a really nice woman, having a great chat. After a while I say, “btw, I’m SorryImLate” and she says, “I know, we sat together yesterday”.
That ended both the conversation and a promising friendship 🫤
I once went to a friend’s party and encountered someone I didn’t know, so I introduced myself. A bit later we all got in the pool, wherein I saw someone I didn’t know and introduced myself.
It was the same person.
Fortunately, she found it funny and my wife tells the story to this day.
Are we to gather that they became your wife?
No, but I realized after I made that post that it did kind of read that way.
At the time, the woman who is now my wife was a relatively fresh girlfriend. She moved to the area to be close to me (though we live in her hometown now) so I took her with me everywhere I could. This was especially true for social events; I don’t have many social graces now, but I had even fewer back then and she often helped me recover whenever I made a faux pas. Also, I wanted her to be close with my friends.
In this case, I hadn’t yet heard of face blindness, but I had taken off my glasses to swim and, when I became flustered at my mistake, she explained to the new person that I just couldn’t see her clearly to identify her. Also, the other person had put her hair up and changed clothes to prepare to swim; I didn’t realize it then, but those two things were a lot of how I identify people, especially new people.
Do you keep introducing yourself to this day?
Whenever I meet a theoretically new person!
Look, I have a brain like an Etch-a-Sketch and I did jumping jacks this morning.
It’s embarrassing for them, maybe. Why would it be embarrassing to you to not remember literally every person you’ve ever met? That’s an unreasonable expectation.
"You don’t remember me…? " implies the ego of the other person is stupidly inflated and that they are SO goddamned memorable that it’s implied you lost something by not remembering a brief interaction with them weeks, months, years ago. Sorry, but that’s total bullshit.
IRL, normal people don’t say that kind of shit and say “we met at the (whatever it was) a while ago.”
I had forgotten I met and had sex with the person who inspired the post.
Yeah that’s pretty rough
Ok, but were they terrible in bed? Was this recently? Were you blasted at the time? Still perfectly reasonable.
I do not remember, I wasn’t drunk but I smoked a lot of weed back then. It was 5 year prior.
“I told you I’d find you.”
Not really
Theres no shame in having trouble remembering someone you greeted 15 years ago at a party but never really interacted with apart from those few seconds
“What did you drive?” usually throws them a bit. I can remember your car. I won’t remember you lol
I’ll remember their hair more than any other feature. All it takes it a hair cut sometimes and a person becomes a stranger.
Meh. I’m a popular person. I meet a lot of people in my supremely satisfying social life. I’m super dooper cool. You must not have made an impression.
