What was her name?

While I was read­ing friends’ updates at Face­book today, some­thing reminded me of a girl I knew back in high school. She went to my high school, and as far as I know she was in my grad­u­at­ing class. I didn’t meet her at school, though, and I don’t think our paths crossed there. I knew her from church. She intro­duced me to the guy who became my first hus­band (who she had dated in the recent past).

Now I’m dri­ving myself nuts, because I absolutely can­not remem­ber her name! I can see her face, plain as day. I remem­ber that she had a some­what uncom­mon last name. I think she had an older brother who had been a big deal on the foot­ball team a year or three ahead of us. Why can’t I remem­ber her name?

I’m really bad with names, hon­estly. A Face­book appli­ca­tion was ask­ing me to ver­ify 130+ peo­ple as high school class­mates, and truly, I didn’t rec­og­nize many of them at all. I didn’t remem­ber most of the peo­ple I saw at our five year reunion. After 25 years? I’m hopeless.

Maybe I should get my old year­books out and look at Face­book and the year­books at the same time. I don’t know that I’d be any bet­ter that way, either. I need con­text for most peo­ple — not just a face and a name, but also some­thing like “that guy from home­room who was always draw­ing cars in his note­books” or “that soprano who bathed in Emer­aude” or “the cute geeky drum­mer who sel­dom made eye con­tact with any­body” (okay, him I’d rec­og­nize, and I do remem­ber his name).

Our year­books aren’t the sort that listed people’s activ­i­ties with their pho­tos. You would have to search through all the activ­ity list­ings to find out who did what, which is much more annoying.

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