Earlier today, I was at Borders, waiting in line for a mocha latte I eventually decided against. While waiting in that line, which was crawling along because frilly drinks like that take time to make, and take even longer when there's only one barista working the joint, I noticed a girl and her friend seated over by one of the windows. She kept looking at me, and then quickly pretending not to when she realized I noticed her.

This worried me.

Now, did it worry me for the normal insecure reasons? Was I afraid they were talking about me? Possibly giggling to themselves about the loser with the unkempt hair? Of course not, I'm beyond that. No, it worried me because I fear she recognized me, and I didn't recognize her.

I've never really been great with recognizing faces. I don't think it's full-on prosopagnosia, I think I just suck at making the jumps first from nothing to "I recognize this face" and then from "I recognize this face" to "I know who this person is". I've known of this deficiency for some time now, probably first picking up on it when I'd go to parties out in Lutz, meet a bunch of people, and then not be able to remember any of their names. Even when I went out there multiple times, and killed the same people over and over in various flavors of Unreal Tournament, none of the names would ever stick to faces.

I've been more self-conscious about it ever since I ran into a guy at RadioShack. I was shopping for some random stuff, like coaxial couplers. (Which, for some reason, they didn't have. Simple little female/female coupler, they had none. This kind of crap is why RadioShack is supposed to be allowed to still exist. They did, however, have a male/male coaxial coupler. How the fuck does that even work? Why the hell would you make that?)

While I was paying for my overpriced cables, he came out of nowhere, addressed me by name, and asked how I was doing. He reminded me that he had been in my Physics class, which I brushed off by saying "Yes, and so were 200 other engineering majors", but no, he was in my lab. I vaguely recalled him being somewhere in the back, but . . shit, I couldn't pick my lab partner from that class out of a lineup today. I can't even tell you who the person was in that class that I knew. I can tell you I had a few other classes with her, and that she'd probably recognize me, but I can't tell you a single thing about her. What's worse is that this was all last semester. It wasn't six years ago, it was six months ago.

So if you want to make me feel awkward, insecure and socially inept, wave to me in public. I will proceed to doubt and hate myself for the rest of the day. [12.14.06@23:02]