I am one of those people who remembers things. While this is great when it comes to finding the keys to the car, in other areas it doesn’t serve me so well. There are things I’d rather not remember, yet they are there clogging up my thoughts. Ugh.

Ryan O’Neal mentions in Vanity Fair magazine that he didn’t recognize his own daughter and made a pass at her at Farrah Faucett’s funeral. That had to be embarrassing. How can someone not remember his own child, but the article goes on to say that it had been decades since they had seen each other.

I am having a greater difficulty putting names onto familiar faces. It happened just this week at Subway. We go to church with this couple and our kids went to high school together, but I could not remember her name. I just now put a face with the name I called her. I guess it’s ok, because they are friends with each other. I really don’t like forgetting names and faces.

Except for one time. This was one of those times where not recognizing someone turned out to be one of the highlights of the year. I was going to a law office in Noblesville to pick up a procedure handbook for a local theater. I was hoping to find some things in its processes that would work for the community theater where I was director of marketing.

As I was leaving with the handbook, the receptionist called me by name. First by my current name, then by my maiden name, and finally by my first marriage name. I looked at her and told her that it was obvious that she knew who I was, but I was drawing a blank.

Then she told me her name – a person with whom I had a major falling out with in the 70s because of my first husband. She bore almost no resemblance to the person I remembered. I literally could have walked right past her and never known who she was.

I wasn’t embarrassed because I didn’t recognize her. I was relieved, although my response was totally unintentional. Some of the things that she did to me were awful.

For me to not be able to recognize her told her that she didn’t have a lasting impact on me. Normally, that would not be something that I would want anyone to think. People need to know that they matter, but not in this case.