What do you do when you think you know someone, but you’re just not sure? According to Rachel, you just come out and ask: “You know, you really remind me of this person I once played soccer with in 1989 in Bumblepuck, MN. You wouldn’t happen to be that person, would you?”
Fair ’nuff. But what if that earlier relationship is potentially embarrassing to either party? Alan Dershowitz used to bemoan the lack of recognition defense attorneys get from their clients, who aren’t exactly eager to tell their date for the evening, “Yeah, this guy helped me beat that rape charge.” Not to mention porn starlets, for that matter (in which case the embarrassed party would likely be the inquirer).
This is all made more complicated by the fact that you can Google practically anyone nowadays. Recently the Globe Magazine’s Miss Conduct addressed whether you should bring up something you’ve learned about a relative stranger from her blog. (Her answer: yes, so long as the topic is neutral and not stalker-ly specific).
All of this is to say that we were recently invited to dinner at a new colleague’s house with her spouse, who turns out to be Wayne of Wayne&Wax (thank you, Google!). I had this nagging suspicion that we were in a blues outfit together back in college, but here he is now, a well-known musician and ethnomusicologist featured in the Boston Phoenix, Boston Globe, NPR, and the BBC. If he was our bassist, would he want to admit to it now? Worse, if he wasn’t, would it seem like I was puffing up my own musical credentials? “Nice to meet you Marshall Mathers. Hey, didn’t you used to rap in my moms’ basement?”
Well, to cut short this very minor mystery, Wayne was indeed the bassist for the band Whiskey Moan (here Google had let me down: I was unable to find a list of band members to verify it beforehand), but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him until the end of the night. When I did, and when we finally, officially, recognized each other, his wife rolled her eyes and observed that only men would hang out for several hours before figuring out that they’d met before.
I can see her logic. It’s hard enough for men to admit they’re lost and ask for directions. It seems an order of magnitude worse to forget a person’s name or his role in your life. Yet worst of all, perhaps, is losing the opportunity to ask and to re-establish old friendships.
(Good to meet you, again, Wayne!)
Hey your blog looks different, or is it just really early… you forgot to mention in this post that you’re not good at remembering anyone’s names to begin with and that’s why you need rachel, to tell you people’s names as you encounter them… by the way i looved pirates of the carib 2