Getting weirded out in Walmart
The other day I'm walking through, well....Walmart with my kids when a woman looked at me, then stopped dead in her tracks. "Oh my god I can't believe it's you Jim!", she shouted. I looked at her for a stunned second and realized I have NO idea who she is! NONE!!! I'm staring at her and drawing an absolute blank. Unaware of this, she continued to ask about my wife by name and asked a few more questions that did little to reveal how she knows me.
This is the point where I thought I had to either pretend to know her or let her know I didn't and risk looking like a fool. Well I went with the later. "I'm sorry, I don't remember you", I said to her. She looked hurt or at the very least shocked that I didn't remember her and then quickly clued me into how she knows me.
Strange Girl: "It's me Erin O*****! We dated back in High School"
ME: "Who?"
Erin (previously known as Strange Girl): "Erin....Erin O******....you don't remember me? But we are friends on Facebook?"
ME: "We are?...oh, nice to see you again"
Erin: "Didn't you look at my profile or any of my pictures"
ME: "I guess not....anyway...how are you?"
Erin: "Why accept me as a friend if you don't want to be friends"
It was at this point that I let her know how pressed for time I was (Total lie...) and as quick as humanly possible got the hell out of there! Oh Facebook! I used to enjoy you so much, despite the constant and annoying applications you hurl at me, but this was a whole new level of weird and I don't know that I can put up with this.
Do people really think that being friends on Facebook equates to being friends in "real life" or is this girl from my past just an isolated wacko. It's just not sitting well with me and has me rethinking the whole "Facebook thing" or at the very least, considering a serious "combing of the herd" when it comes to those I'm friends with.
Am I over reacting here? I could use your thoughts.
Here is a video that illustrates what it would be like if "Life were like Facboook"...
3 comments:
I don't have a facebook account specifically for that reason!
I remember being a kid shopping with my parents. My dad was a chiropractor and we used to meet lots of paitents at stores. My mother was the only one in the family who could remember names and know that my dad couldn't so they had a secret signal and my mother would butt in an introduce herself.
It was really funny to watch!
David H. Johnston
http://www.paddlinginstructor.com
I was in line at the beer store about 2 years ago, one hot summer evening. An intense looking woman who was standing in line and holding a cat cage kept staring at me. She looked a bit disheveled, and strangely eastern European. I sort of smiled in an apologetic way, nodded my head and looked away. I then looked sideways again to see if I knew her from somewhere. She was staring at me again, in an accusing way. Thinking she didn't speak english, perhaps she took my smile and nod in an insulting way (why I thought this I don't know), I smiled and nodded at her cat and said "Nice cat" and briefly gestured at her cat. She then asked me accusingly what I was doing in the neighbourhood. "Crazy!" was the word constituting my internal dialogue by that point... Then to give this strange person a way out, I said "Oh, I'm sorry, do we know each other?" Then she said her name, again as though I already knew. Turns out, I did. We'd dated for about a year early in university and ended the relationship amicably, but we lost touch after she moved away. She's since taken a turn for the worse in a lot of ways, and in fact looks like an entirely different person.
The experience left me shaken for the rest of the evening. The beer helped, though.
:-)
Yeah, I had a bad experience (you're aware of what it was) and that put me off facebook for a while. I'm back on there but I've been more selective in my connections and I've severely restricted who can see my content.
By the way, she's prolly read this post already and is not happy with you all over again... if things go the way they went for me she'll be posting nasty comments any time now.
Be thankful Mrs. Strombecker has left you alone or I'm sure she would say something about proper etiquette. :)
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