Moments out of Context
Before I begin, I'd like to mention that the title of this article is a title that's been proposed to me more than once for a parody of my game. For those of you with money on this, it took me 12 entries to get around to hawking my game. Yes, I'm a whore. Of course I'm a whore; the whole reason I started this blog is because a cute girl at a party recently said, "You're so funny. Do you have a blog?"
So, on with the show. I think that we tend to associate people with a context (But then I think rain is wet, so who am I to judge? [1 point]) Maybe you've found yourself in this position before: You run in to someone. You know you know them. You know you know them well enough that you shouldn't be in this position. But you can't for the life of you remember who they are and how the hell you know them.
Here's what happened to me at karaoke saturday:
I came in at the appointed hour. As usual, my regular gang was seated, many of them finishing dinner. There were also a group of young women at the end of the table, all pleasant to behold. I gather that one of them is dating the son of one of my Karaoke Amigos, which had something to do with why they were there. One of them stands up, greets me by name, comments on how long it's been since we've seen each other, shows off her shiny new engagement ring and-don't-I-know-it's-been-a-long-time-coming.
Now, because seating was tight, I spent the next four hours sitting next to this girl, making small talk and chit-chat with a very personable woman while, for the life of me, I could remember how the hell I knew her.
And, of course, the awkward part of this is that it was clear that she remembered me, so I couldn't really cop to now having a clue to who she was.
I mean, I could have; I had the physical power to form the question. But, come on. What would you have done? How do you phrase the question: "Sorry, I have no idea who the hell you are. Could you help me out here?" "Clearly, our last meeting was more memorable for you than it was for me. Who are you?" "You seem to be mistaking me for, um, me." It's awkward. It's embarrasing. It's easier to just play along and hope it comes to you before you say something revealing (For example, it would be embarrasing if you said, "So, have you ever been to Spain?" only to have her respond, "Um, yeah. It's where we met."). I'm pretty good at this anyway, since I was not blessed with a particularly good ability to distinguish conversations in a crowd. As a result, I often find myself answering questions with vague, enigmatic and contentless statements, in order to cover up the fact that I couldn't hear the question (Because it gets annoying to say "What?" five times to every statement.). Yeah. Of course. Well, you know. Hard to say.
It finally did come to me. I dated her cousin. Seriously. For over a year. There was talk of marriage. But it doesn't always. About seven years ago, I bumped into someone at the K-mart, who said "Hi," and "How are you?" and "Long time no see," and to this day, I have no idea who this woman was (That's actually a lie. As I started writing this column, seven years later, it occured to me who she was: she was the clerk at the gas station I usually filled up at while I was in high school.)
I'm not really going anywhere with this, just something I wanted to point out. Until next time.
I've never actually been to Spain. But I kinda like the music.
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So, on with the show. I think that we tend to associate people with a context (But then I think rain is wet, so who am I to judge? [1 point]) Maybe you've found yourself in this position before: You run in to someone. You know you know them. You know you know them well enough that you shouldn't be in this position. But you can't for the life of you remember who they are and how the hell you know them.
Here's what happened to me at karaoke saturday:
I came in at the appointed hour. As usual, my regular gang was seated, many of them finishing dinner. There were also a group of young women at the end of the table, all pleasant to behold. I gather that one of them is dating the son of one of my Karaoke Amigos, which had something to do with why they were there. One of them stands up, greets me by name, comments on how long it's been since we've seen each other, shows off her shiny new engagement ring and-don't-I-know-it's-been-a-long-time-coming.
Now, because seating was tight, I spent the next four hours sitting next to this girl, making small talk and chit-chat with a very personable woman while, for the life of me, I could remember how the hell I knew her.
And, of course, the awkward part of this is that it was clear that she remembered me, so I couldn't really cop to now having a clue to who she was.
I mean, I could have; I had the physical power to form the question. But, come on. What would you have done? How do you phrase the question: "Sorry, I have no idea who the hell you are. Could you help me out here?" "Clearly, our last meeting was more memorable for you than it was for me. Who are you?" "You seem to be mistaking me for, um, me." It's awkward. It's embarrasing. It's easier to just play along and hope it comes to you before you say something revealing (For example, it would be embarrasing if you said, "So, have you ever been to Spain?" only to have her respond, "Um, yeah. It's where we met."). I'm pretty good at this anyway, since I was not blessed with a particularly good ability to distinguish conversations in a crowd. As a result, I often find myself answering questions with vague, enigmatic and contentless statements, in order to cover up the fact that I couldn't hear the question (Because it gets annoying to say "What?" five times to every statement.). Yeah. Of course. Well, you know. Hard to say.
It finally did come to me. I dated her cousin. Seriously. For over a year. There was talk of marriage. But it doesn't always. About seven years ago, I bumped into someone at the K-mart, who said "Hi," and "How are you?" and "Long time no see," and to this day, I have no idea who this woman was (That's actually a lie. As I started writing this column, seven years later, it occured to me who she was: she was the clerk at the gas station I usually filled up at while I was in high school.)
I'm not really going anywhere with this, just something I wanted to point out. Until next time.
I've never actually been to Spain. But I kinda like the music.
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