Peering through Virtual’s Blur

At my last chiropractic appointment, I was sitting in the waiting room, thumbing through some healthy-living magazine, when I was approached by a man who said to me, “Are you [Indigo]?”

“Yes,” I said, “I am.” In fact, I knew who this guy was. We had chatted at a party many years before and we have mutual friends.

But he did not remember me from that party. He didn’t remember talking to me. He said, “I recognize you from Facebook. We have a lot of friends in common. But I didn’t think you lived around here.”

Our conversation was cut short by my being called in to my appointment.

“You look just like your picture!” he said as I was walking away, which I took as a compliment, as my photo actually looks much much better than I do at almost any given moment. But wait—maybe this means the photo doesn’t actually look as good as I think it does. Hmmmm.

It’s funny. I have occasionally been out and about and seen someone and tried to place him or her and realized that I recognize them [sic] from Facebook. Unless I am at a party and actually talking to said person, I have never said a word. I’ve never had the nerve to approach someone based on Facebook recognition alone. (Of course, I don’t [generally] have nerve to approach someone based on anything alone.)

Later, I sent that guy a note via Facebook apologizing for cutting our conversation short and thanking him for introducing himself. He wrote back, saying it must have been the listing of my hometown that made him think I didn’t live here. This means that at some point he had checked out my profile. I check out people’s profiles too, of course. It just never occurs to me that people check out mine.

And now he’s my Facebook friend.