I’m sitting on a bus I’m pretty sure is the North Line, praying it’s going to drop me off anywhere close to New Cabell within the half hour window I’ve allotted myself to get to my next class — and there’s a guy hardcore staring at me from across the aisle.
We all know this stare pretty well. He remembers me from somewhere. He’s sure of it — that tiny twitch in his left eye and the furrow in his brow are a dead giveaway he’s trying to place me.
Of course, I know who he is immediately. He sat two seats down from me in my astronomy lecture on Tuesday. I asked him if I could see his copy of the syllabus, but he had forgotten it in his dorm room as well. We chatted for a while before the lecture began — name, year, home state, all of which come flooding back to me instantly as he squinted at me on the bus.
This sensation, I’m told, is not as familiar to most people.
I have a very good memory. Like, “I remember the exact red shirt I wore to the Valentine’s Day party in second grade because Matt C. spilled his fruit punch on it and didn’t give me a Valentine” good. And growing up in a small town with an extremely tight-knit community made that gift a necessity.
With about 500 residents — a large percentage of which attended some combination of church, school and various community events alongside my family — my hometown forced me to learn to match everyone’s name with everyone’s face. It was the kind of town where if my mother’s tennis partner waved to me on the street and I didn’t recognize her in time to return the gesture, I would be hearing about it at dinner that night.
As a result, my recall is pretty reliable.
In a community of nearly 14,000 strangers, however, introductions play out a little bit differently. During our first week of college, we are required to meet people on our halls, people on our floors, people in the rest of the building, classmates from seminars and maybe a few friends in a lecture. It seems impossible to remember even half of these new faces — at least not from the first introduction.
But whether they recognize me or not, I remember nearly all of them.
This puts me in a rather awkward position. On the one hand, I could cheerfully recall someone’s name upon the second meeting, risking coming off as freakishly eager and even a little creepy (my claims that I’m just really good with names and faces only manage to put people at ease about 75 percent of the time). Alternately, I could put on a show of smiling apologetically, squinting and finally guessing a name that starts with the same letter as their given one, introducing myself again once the process is complete. For the sake of fitting in, I usually choose option two.
I’ve found this, however, to be a little unsettling. It’s a strange feeling to have to fake confusion not only upon seeing a person whose face I can immediately place, but also about whom I can remember random, personal details. In an environment which is completely unfamiliar and at times a little scary, it can be especially discouraging to realize how comforting — if unlikely — it would be to have the person I was introduced to the other day come up and say, “Hey.”
And so it occurs to me, on this bus, with this guy from astronomy staring at me, how silly it is to pretend I don’t know any of these people. Chances are, they are feeling just as lost as I am in this huge sea of new faces, many of which remain nameless.
I can make someone feel more secure and comfortable in an uncertain time — and, in the process, I can also become “Kristin, the friendly girl on the bus who remembered my name,” rather than just someone vaguely familiar on the North Line. And if that tiny gesture might make someone feeling alone feel a little better, then I can deal with introducing myself again.
Hi, I’m Kristin.
Kristin’s column runs biweekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at k.murtha@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
Desayuna con Gomez — a hidden gem for authentic Mexican breakfast
By Sophie Guettel | 17 hours agoDesayuna con Gomez offers authentic Mexican breakfast dishes at unbeatable prices, all within a cozy, no-fuss setting.
Parlez-vous français?
By Miriella Jiffar | YesterdayThe community at La Maison Française is what makes the experience so special.
Top 10 ways to be kind today
By Elizabeth Parsons | 4 days agoActs of kindness, for others and ourselves, spread positivity and build community.
