Memory People

Do other people remember me, as I remember them? People I met in passing, but who are lodged in my brain. The other day in Perspectives planning meeting, someone mentioned the name S---- M----. It sounded so familiar, and it was the next day at dinner that I recalled why! She was the lady who helped out at ConVal Christian club when I attended for support so many years ago. She gave me and the other Christian club attendees Andrew Murray's book Humility, which still sits on my bookshelf. I can almost picture her, though I haven't thought of her in years. Would she remember me?

Then yesterday someone asked me if I knew B------ C-----, a possible work connection. I didn't, but the last name was someone who had just registered for Perspectives, if it were spelled the same way, and a quick search on Facebook verified that BC is connected to the Perspectives registrant, who also has a mutual friend that I remember bumping into in Bible School days. I remember giving him and his sister a tour of Fairwood. Would they remember me?

Later yesterday Gretchen (and Caledonia) came over for the express purpose of giving me an update on her high school classmate A---- Z------, whose mother her mother had seen in a local shop. Oh, yeah. AZ. I never knew him very well, but I had watched him play basketball (or warm the bench) a lot, and Gretchen had had him sign the high school yearbook I bought. I don't think he'd remember me.

Even later yesterday I was reading through WORLD magazine, which can enthrall me for a good hour or two (I wanted to read it as I was eating my dinner before dashing out the door to work yesterday, but I had to resist temptation because I knew it would make me late for work). Something about the layout impressed me, and I flipped to the credits page to make sure that D---- F------- is still the key design guy for the magazine. DF is a really cool guy. He hung out with WJI students a good bit when I took the course in the summer of '01. I rode in his car, I hung out at his house with fellow students a couple of times. He's kind and classy and introduced me to the musical "Jane Eyre" and does great design work. He wouldn't remember me, but it's fun to think that I know him since he's half-famous.

How many other people are there like that? People who crossed our radar for a few minutes or for a few days, characters who etch themselves indefinitely on the memory.

Which raises the question, how many people have memory fragments of me? Would I remember them?