What lengths would you go to pretend you remembered someone’s name? Would you lie? Would you hug a stranger?

Last year, I was at a talk that Alex Neve was giving. He was delivering his first of five Massey Lectures.

Pat, Alex’s wife, is Deb’s best friend. Deb and I got married a couple of months after Pat and Alex. We spent our first year of marriage sharing an apartment with them.

The ties run deep. Deb and I moved around a bit in the Toronto area before settling down in Oakville.

Pat and Alex moved around the world a little bit before settling down in Ottawa.

Even though it’s been decades since we lived in the same city, a lot of life has been shared.

Weddings, births, funerals. Life.

And through all that I’ve met Pat and Alex’s siblings, cousins, and friends.

Many of those folks were at the talk that Alex was giving.

There were people I recognised, but whose names escaped me. And a few people whose names I knew but no longer recognised.

Deb wasn’t with me, so I was experiencing this on my own.

I hate crowds. And there was a lot of milling around.

I wasn’t supposed to be at the event, but Pat’s brother, Bob, couldn’t make it. I was using his ticket and sitting with his wife Nola.

I met up with Nola when I arrived and stuck by her as much as I could in this sea of people.

We kept bumping into people. Friends and family of either Pat or Alex.

People who seemed to recognise me. But I struggled to remember them.

It was painful.

But also nice. It’s cool to see people from a quarter century or more ago. I was younger than my kids are now when I last saw many of those people.

After the talk, I went to the washroom.

When I got out, I bumped into a few more people who I knew but didn’t recognise.

I scanned the room for Nola and saw her speaking to a couple of women. I scampered towards her.

Nola introduced me to the first woman and I shook her hand. I looked over to the other woman. She looked vaguely familiar. She looked like she was trying to remember my name.

I had no clue who she was.

My brain was in deep search mode. I could almost hear the cogs whirring. Who was she?

What do I do?

And then a voice in my head said, “I’m going in.”

I pretended that I recognised her. I smiled and gave her a big hug.

People who know me know that I’m a hugger.

Right after the hug, the other woman asked how we knew each other.

I looked at the woman I had just hugged. Hopefully, she would remember how we knew each other…

She looked at me blankly. “I don’t know,” she replied.

Oh, dear. I didn’t know this woman after all!

Busted.

I confessed that I didn’t know her, but that I’d been bumping into so many people I didn’t remember. And when it looked like she was trying to place me, I just assumed that we knew each other.

We all laughed.

Doh!