Don’t I Know You?
March 15th, 2009 | Categories: Life, Question of the Week | 5 CommentsThe other day when I was at work, I was walking past the receptionist’s desk when someone said to me, “Oh hey! I didn’t know you worked here! What’s up?” And me, being the clever person that I am, stared blankly at her and responded with, “Uh, hi! Yeah, I work here. How are you?” I managed to make a quick escape by excusing myself to make some photocopies1, but I couldn’t figure out how I knew this girl.
Half an hour later, I finally solved the mystery. I shared one of my classes with her, but as she sits behind me every single class, I only hear her voice during the class discussions, and I never see her face. I felt bad for not recognizing her at once when I saw her, but it took me a while to figure out how I knew her. Still, I hope that I managed to act like I knew her immediately, and that I recovered from my initial “Wait, who is this girl and how do I know her?!” reaction and covered it with the assumption that sooner or later, I’d figure out how I knew her, so I may as well pretend that I remembered how I knew her when talking. I hate it when I am caught off guard whenever I bump into people I know, I always feel really awkward for not knowing who they are and am unsure of what to say when talking to them!
Question of the Week: When you see someone that knows you but you don’t recognize them, how do you react?
- I work as an office assistant, so the photocopier and I are the best of friends. [↩]
Tags: wtf
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Hi, I'm Manda. I'm a college student studying communications and languages. I like to read, shop, bake, and travel. I have a tendency to listen to my favorite songs on repeat for hours on end. Sometimes I catch myself thinking in a language other than English. 
That happened me a few times, actually! I greet them and go (and in the way I try to recall who’s that person), but if they keep talking to me, leaving me in an awkward situation, I (politely) make everything even more awkward: “uhm, excuse me, where do I know you from?”. It always makes things a little embarrasing for that person, but I just can’t stand the feeling of having an unanswered question in my head (“who was s/he?”), heh.
This happened to me a lot when I first when to college in another city. I was meeting dozens of new people a day, and sometimes they would meet me (again) in the cafeteria. Usually, I would just keep going with the conversation (completely not knowing their name), and then I would stupidly ask, “Hey! What was your name again???” and be done with it. Ehe.
Oh, this is one of the awkward situations in life that you cannot evade and what happens a lot. I normally pretend the same thing, that I actually do know them (which is probably true anyway) and hope that my face doesn’t give away the truth. I’m not sure whether it works or not, though.
The worse thing is when someone doesn’t recognize you. I just hate that! It’s an uncomfortable feeling, as well. Knowing that that person doesn’t even remember my name makes me feel kind of pathetic.
I used to live in a small village where everyone knew everyone. After I moved to a nearby city, people would come up to me and say “Heyy!” And I had the vague feeling I’ve seen them somewhere. I just played along and chattered for a while. No one seemed to know I forgot who they are. Awkward… Sometimes they ask if I remember them. And of course, those times I do :)
Once I ran into my godmother, whom I’ve only seen a couple of times. After a while she said “You don’t know me, do you?” No, sorry…
It would be better to just say right away “Mmm, you seem familiar but I can’t remember right now…” And then “Oh yeah, of course. Silly me.”
This happens to me all the time. I am good with faces, but bad with names and how I know them. For the longest time in my head, it was always “OMG, did I hook up with this girl?”
I always end up using very general terms hopping to remember who they are in the first seconds of the conversation. “Hey you. How’ve you been. What are you up to these days.” Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.