Difference

In one way, AB and I are very different.

I have a vault of a memory when it comes to faces. Not always names, but I recognize faces very easily. I remember kids from kindergarten to college and I can usually place them too.

This has been very interesting with regards to sites like Classmates and more aptly, Facebook. Truly I look through my list of people from high school on Facebook and I know most all of them. And I didn't go to a small high school. Search my work place and I can pinpoint most of the people who list my company as their place of employment work. I know faces. And if we went to the same high school, I remember you.

I knew this was unusual probably about high school. I remember being in some get together study group after school one day. I was sitting in the classroom with many of the crowd I didn't hang around with, but knew because we had classes together - or so *I* thought. Somehow we got on topic of knowing people and I was surprised that even though I had classes with most of these people, they didn't know who I was or that we had other classes together. I was a quiet teenager and I tended to stick to myself, not participate a lot and hang out across the street from the school in "the park" and not on campus. I never saw it as my fault people didn't remember me, but instead their oblivion.

At my 10 year class reunion I got a lot of blank looks as people were greeting me. It was as though they were trying to be nice as I called them by name, but truly had no idea who I was. I remember one girl who hung out in the park with us actually admitted - "I have no idea at all who you are". The first honest person all night.

Sure, I look a lot different from high school. But my ability to recognize faces is sometimes annoying. Take the other morning for example. I had friended a guy from high school on Facebook who was in my crowd our junior year - he was a year older than us. I can tell you what his parents house was like (gorgeous and white), what kind of dog he had (bull terrier that looked like Spuds Mackenzie), that he drove a red Honda CR-X, who he dated (Cinnamon) and that after he dumped her he dated Lynette for awhile (and this appalled me), that he cut his hair after he made a deal with his dad that if he cut it, dad would buy him the Honda CR-X. I even remember intimate details of a relationship of his and the details he shared with my guy friends about this girl in my gym class in a not so favorable light.

Surely he would remember me, we hung out together, went camping as a group together...

Nope.

He accepted my friendship request and honestly (which really does make me happy to know these things) sent me a note telling me he had no idea who I was.

I have come to accept for some time now that I will remember people and they don't remember me. I don't always friend people that I know right away on Facebook because I carry a little paranoia in my head that they won't have any idea who I am and will just think I am a stalker freak. It is only people I know HAVE to know me, that I jump on friending. And when they remember me it makes me happy and feel a little normal!

Now the flip side.

My husband.

He remembers NO ONE. He remembers his crowd. He accepts friends on Facebook and then spends weeks trying to figure out why he should know this person. He even carried on a long conversation with one guy on Facebook and still claims he has absolutely no idea who he is! I keep telling him to tell people this up front. It doesn't mean you aren't open to a friendship, but maybe they can help you jog your brain.

Another aspect - EVERYONE and their dog remembers my husband. (Seriously dogs remember AB.) He actually gets a little annoyed by this probably in the same way I get a little annoyed at never being remembered. We go to the grocery store and invariably someone will come up and greet him and chat. We walk off as I chastise him for not introducing me and he admits, "I didnt introduce you because I had no idea who they were, I probably work with them".

Totally foreign to me. I can't cover myself as well as AB does. He is good at going with the flow when someone recognizes him and he doesn't them. Me? IF this ever happened to me I would stand there blankly.

AB often wonders why people remember him.

LOL.

I remind him that his port wine stain is pretty much a dead giveaway as well as his somewhat unique name.