Here's a blanket statement for everyone who walks up to me hoping I'll remember them from our previous meeting. Please don't take it personally, but I probably won't. Perhaps we met at some party a decade ago or in Istanbul in October 2006. Did I really edit a brochure for your husband 13 years ago? You saw me on the BTS, at the FCCT, at an art opening, walking near Siam, at a bar. Sorry, our interaction didn't imprint itself onto my consciousness. You say I was your best friend in high school and we hung out together all the time. Apart from your maiden name and luxuriant long wavy hair, I recollect nothing of our time together.
If you introduce yourself by asking where's my trademark big hat, I'm very happy to have forgotten you. The broad rimmed hat I sported sported around Bangkok from 1993 to 1997 (naturally I don't recall the dates) was fun at the time, but I've moved on. You, on the other hand apparently imagine people stay trapped in one signature fashion moment.
This habit of routinely forgetting so many folks who retain such vivid memories of me is a tad worrisome. I've considered early onset Alzheimer's except I can't remember a time when I wasn't forgetting. My mother had prodigious powers of recall and gleefully taunted me about my microscopic memory bank. "Don't tell me you've forgotten so and so," she'd chide and proceed to recount a short story's worth of anecdotes about my escapades with the person. I consoled myself thinking all she did was sit around remembering while I was running around experiencing life.
Two seconds after being introduced to someone at a social function I'll probably have forgotten their name. Usually one or two meetings is sufficient to imprint someone's identity onto my semi-consciousness. Sometimes no matter how many times I meet a person, their name continues to escape me. Just to let you know, asking, "Don't you remember my name this time?" won't make either of us feel any better when I admit to forgetting you yet again.
I used to hide my ignorance of people's identities behind mundane questions like, "So how's work these days?," or "What've you been up to lately?" Occasionally their answer jogs my dysfunctional memory bank and allows me to wriggle out of a mutually uncomfortable situation. Usually it doesn't.
It's nice when people say, "Who can forget you? You're so memorable/weird/distinctive" or whatever, but I still feel terrible about all the unexplainable blanks in my brain. On the positive side, if we ever had an argument in some distant and ended up hating each other, rest assured I've probably forgotten the genesis of the problem and so perhaps we can be friends once again.
Maybe it's all a cosmic solution to my much larger problem of letting go and being in the moment.
It's nice when people say, "Who can forget you? You're so memorable/weird/distinctive" or whatever, but I still feel terrible about all the unexplainable blanks in my brain. On the positive side, if we ever had an argument in some distant and ended up hating each other, rest assured I've probably forgotten the genesis of the problem and so perhaps we can be friends once again.
Maybe it's all a cosmic solution to my much larger problem of letting go and being in the moment.
