We met once for an hour? Of course I remember you.

How I carry strangers with me, and the social performance of pretending to forget

I walk into one of my neighborhood coffee shops to get some work done one morning—we were a bit late to daycare drop off and I decide to go to the ‘busy’ coffee shop so I know I will need to scope out the scene to see where I can sit. The communal table is already full, and only one open seat at a two-top remains. I ask the person sitting in the occupied chair if I may join them and they nod (as one does in these situations, unless you are waiting for someone or something like that).

As I scan the tables, I notice a woman that immediately looks familiar. Before I can finish the where do I know her from thought, I place her.

Two months ago, my husband and I met this woman while we were touring preschools for our son to attend when he turns two. She has a son a few months older than our kid but has had a nanny up until this point; this would be the first time her kid was in a school setting and her questions reflect that. A lot of her questions are good—as she asks them, I write down some of the answers—both to things I’d thought of asking too but also to questions that hadn’t yet crossed my mind.

At the coffee shop, she’s sitting with a man who appeared to be her husband—they’re both on their phones, making quiet conversation while sharing a croissant. At some point she seems annoyed that he can’t figure out how to make some account she needs him to create. Relatable.

This isn’t a ‘friend meet-cute’ story, by the way. This isn’t about me seeing a mom I thought I could be friends with and deciding whether or not to go up to her and all of that. It’s not about a missed connection or social regret. I’ve told similar stories before but that’s not this one.

If we make eye contact, I’ll say she looks familiar, I think, and then I can slowly pretend to place her. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over my almost 34 years on this planet, is that you really shouldn’t meet someone once for an hour at a daycare tour and remember her, and that she has a kid a little bit older than your kid, and that she’s looking to start in September, and that she’s had a nanny so far. You shouldn’t remember the street she lives on. You shouldn’t remember that her name is Chloe¹.

It’s not like I have this type of memory for all details in my life. That same morning, after I recognize Chloe, I realize I forgot to put deodorant on. I have so many little systems set up so I don’t forget things throughout the day like ‘drink water’. I have to write every little work task down or I won’t do it—not out of an act of resistance or not wanting to follow through, but because it will leave the purview of tasks to be done almost immediately. I could not tell you what I had for dinner three nights ago, and the fact that our gas bill doesn’t allow for autopay is crippling (if not potentially damaging).

But I’ve always had a strange memory for placing people. Even if I don’t remember their name every time, I often do. And definitely always used to when I was younger—I think as I age that particular ability has been lost, and I’m unsure if that is just the slow deterioration of our brains as time goes on rearing its head or if it is something I’ve learned to forget.

I don’t remember how I learned this lesson—I have no memory of remembering a person’s name or a specific detail about them and it going horribly wrong, no memory of anxiety or embarrassment—but it’s a lesson I somehow learned nonetheless. It’s stuck with me in a way that I now ‘mask’ in these situations, deliberately though often not realizing I’m doing it until the performance is underway.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

It’s a version of what Goffman called “the presentation of self²”—the idea that all of us are moving throughout the world presenting curated versions of ourselves at any given moments. We play roles as if we’re actors in a play and tailor our behaviors depending on the audience. It’s the script we follow to manage what others think of us and how we show up in the world. In these scenes, I am playing the role of woman who forgets like everyone else, even when I don’t.

I know who you are, but I won’t let it on. It’s okay if you don’t remember me—I’ve already written that into my script, and it’ll show up soon in my performance. Don’t feel bad—it’s all part of the story, and you’re fitting in just fine.

Play it cool. You can be friendly, but play it cool.

Chloe and I don’t end up making eye contact while we’re at the coffee shop together and so I don’t say anything to her, though I do look up a few times to try. Friendly but cool.

Even when I do recognize someone in the wild and mention they look familiar, I always follow it up with a caveat: “oh but I have a really weird memory for people! I don’t expect you to remember me”.

I realize I don’t actually have any tangible data as to whether this is weird or not. But at some point, I was told or picked up that it was, and it’s informed a pretty significant way I move about the world. The script has been written and the performance tried and true.

I am reminded of other moments I’ve done this. I was in a ‘Parent and Baby’ yoga class with someone that was in my birth-prep class. I recognized her immediately and remembered she was due a few weeks after me—likely an August baby. If we’re putting away our blocks and blankets at the same time maybe I’ll say something, I thought. It didn’t happen and so I let it go.

Again, there wasn’t this draw to strike up a conversation, more of a personal obligation to acknowledge something. The internal battle to be nice and polite and friendly while not wanting to be (for lack of a better phrase) a fucking creep.

When I was on maternity leave, I’d go to a weekly park meet up³ with other parents and babies born in July. We started going when my son was just a few weeks old and by the time I went back to work at the end of November, they were a weekly constant.

The group shifted and morphed a bit week over week—people coming in and out as their situations changed—but it still felt, as a whole, consistent. When we went back to work, the weekly meetings fell off the calendar.

A small group decided to reconnect over Columbus day, and it was fun to see who was walking and talking and who was already expecting baby number two. A woman introduced herself to me, “Sasha*, Ada’s* mom”.

I already knew this. “Hi, I’m Julie, good to see you,” I said. A subtle nod to the fact that we’d met before, but without going into too much detail.

What I didn’t reveal was that I remember what she did for a living. I remember that I gave her a bag of pacifiers that didn’t work for us after she was talking about how she couldn’t find one that worked for Ada. I remember which one of those pacifiers ended up working when I asked her about it the next week.

I remember the preschool she’d chosen for Ada, and I remember being impressed that she’d secured a spot for Ada as early as August when she wasn’t going to start until January. I remember that Ada started preschool in January.

I didn’t reveal any of that, because why would I remember that after a year?

I don’t know why, but I do.

I used to outright pretend to completely forget knowing someone but have returned now to the slightly more genuine but still safe ‘you look familiar—why?’ angle. It’s not perfect and does feel a bit disingenuous, but I feel as though I am unpacking decades worth of learned social norms that I picked up just from existing.

While on the surface I’ve learned that remembering people after these small interactions is strange, internally it’s actually pretending to forget them that feels weirder to me.

I don’t have a resolution for this—I know as I continue to move through this world and meet more and more people (especially now, as a parent) this will continue to happen. I don’t feel the strong pull to always identify myself and all the information that’s coming to the surface for me as I recognize someone who really is just one degree away from being a stranger, but I have started myself recognizing this a bit more.

I also do see myself softening a little bit. At the playground, immediately saying “oh hi, our kids played last week, I’m Julie,” and letting the parent in question respond in turn, taking the pressure of remembering my name off of them and the pressure of the weirdness off of me.

I’ve also noticed the small ways in which others do this, which pulls me out of my own head a bit. Again at the playground, a mom turned to me one morning while our kids were in the sandbox together.

“I think we’ve met”, she says. It did take me a minute to place her (she admits she cut her hair recently, which helps). I asked for her name and her kid’s name and her partner’s name, and then it clicked.

“Yes, we have!” I replied, without skipping a beat, playing it cool, or trying to cover it up. “Twice, a long time ago! It’s good to see you”.

I’m not looking to turn these passing interactions into something deeper—sure there may be a mom at the park I enjoy chatting with and could see myself getting to know—but for the most part, I’m really just observing the fact that I do remember people and I’m not sure if I should.

I’m still figuring out how to carry these fragments of others with me—when to let on what I know and when to pretend to forget. It feels strange to lie but I’ve learned to do it anyway, as an act of self-preservation. I suspect this is a small way that I show empathy to others and I don’t want to move through the world forgetting these people or fun facts, regardless of how seemingly insignificant they feel.

A bag of pacifiers, a preschool start date, a name mentally jotted down for the future—I guess that’s just how my brain works. So even if I don’t say it out loud, yes, of course I remember you.

1. All names have been changed (even though I absolutely remember all of them).

2. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1956.

3.