Do I Know You?

How do I know you? Let me count the ways. Calling you by name and name-calling are mutually exclusive. I use both.

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I live on a tiny island on the Georgia coast. In a sense we’re all neighbors here. Being friendly is essential, at least outwardly. But not too friendly. Hypocrisy is alive and well in South Georgia.

Knowing neighbors is one thing, but figuring them out is another. Besides, who wants to know too much about their neighbors? They might be weirdoes and invite you to dinner. You’d have to reciprocate. What would people think of you then? Identification by association is risky. Life gets complicated.

Here, as in other small towns, people are known in ways other than by their given names. For example, by their vehicles, their dogs, their voices and their swagger.

Facial recognition is the quickest means of identity. Except when people pop up out of context. Like the time you were shopping with your wife in Winn Dixie. Then, out of nowhere, a beautiful woman shows up. She smiles, you cringe. It’s not the gender that frightens you, it’s the age. Younger than your daughter. A classic example of wrong place, wrong time. Life is like this…unpredictable.

You prepare for an introduction, knowing an interrogation will follow. Suddenly your brain suffers a complete memory meltdown. To depend on instant recall synapses is to lean on a weak reed.

What’s her name? You’re terrified. You avoid eye contact, fiddle with the can of sardines, pray she’ll walk on by. No such luck. She closes in for the encounter.

“Hi,” she says with a voice that melts steel. You flash a lame smile, mutter something and pretend to vanish. She gets the message. So does your wife.

It’s important to have a plan for such contingencies. Your wife asks, “Who’s That?”

Your response is a weak stutter. “Beats me. Looks familiar, can’t place her. Clearly a case of mistaken identity.”

You are not convincing. A more intensive inquisition is gestating; you can feel it by the sudden chill in the air. Men have a keen sense of impending marital doom. But let’s leave such an unfortunate scenario.

We often know people by the pew they sit in on Sunday. Be careful where you sit in Baptist churches. Know this: they fill up from the back forward. You’re only safe on the front row.

Once I visited my mother in the small town of my youth. On Sunday I went to church alone after a long hiatus. I sat on the second row left. After the service, two ancient ladies approached, “We saw you come in and finally remembered your name. You were in the wrong place.”

Huh? A ‘wrong’ place in church? “Where is my place?” I ask, wondering if God were revealing a lingering grievance against me. I often have these thoughts in church.

“Last row back right, not second row left front.” Women never forget! Do you suppose heaven has a seating chart? I shudder to imagine where my ‘place’ might be!

I know some people by their sobriquets, often concoctions of my own choosing. I ascribe names, often not complimentary, based on physical size and shape as much as swagger. Voice recognition is often easier to recall than names, especially the loud-mouth bluster in the locker room.

Word here is people peg me as an obsessive type. The cognomen ‘Screwy’ comes to mind. I think it’s because of my fetish with shirts. I have never met a shirt I didn’t like. My closet is full of them, 520 as of last March.

But a strange thing is happening…they’re slowly disappearing. Last Tuesday my stash was down to 262. Today only 194 are hanging around. What gives?

I suspect my wife. I raise the issue with her. I get that shrug-of-the-shoulders response. I know that reply…it says nothing, but then it says everything. I march her to the window.

Outside the lawn maintenance crew is wearing new uniforms, resort casual. Their flowered Tommy Bahamas bear a remarkable resemblance to my missing ones. Is there a connection?

I demand a reply. “God loves a cheerful giver,” she says, then laughs and leaves. What will the neighbors think now?

Who knows. But I know what I think…. After 47 years of marriage, I still have no clue who she is!

Bud Hearn
September 20, 2013