Hi, I'm Tom.

Tonight I had my birthday celebration extravaganza. Since my birthday falls on a weekday this year, I decided to make it tonight based on a number of criteria. I usually don't like to make a big deal out of my birthday because much like New Year's Eve, its always one of those days that is overhyped and overrated. I usually just feel shorter of breath and one day closer to death. But this year I gladly accepted the chance to go out to dinner and drinks, mostly because I am dirt poor right now and could use the break from paying for drinks for a night.

The worst thing about always being nearly broke at the end of August is the looming fantasy football fees that are always right around the corner. I am one of those rare people that feels bad when I owe someone money and I always get it back to them, without exception, the next time I see them. Being unemployable has lead to me not being able to pay for my fantasy teams at the draft, which is both embarassing and depressing for me. But I digress.

Tonight we went to a brewery for dinner, which was pretty good. I had some good beers and ate some great appetizers (along with a decent meal). We then went to our old underage hangout for some after dinner drinks. I chose this place basically as a goof. I didn't expect to see anyone who was over 21, much less anyone we knew. But when we walked in, lo and behold, there were 2 guys from our high school class in there. Pretty sad, but I can't discount the fact that they could have been there as a goof as well.

We walked past the first guy, who was sitting down (I thought I recognized him, but was not really sure so I wasn't going to go up to him. Plus, I wasn't really that close to him, so we would probably just have one of those awkward conversations where I have to say I'm unemployed. No thank you.) The second guy was over by the dart boards and recognized my friend Lupus. (His name isn't really Lupus, but for the purposes of this story it is). They start talking and the high school guy (Tom), clearly doeasn't recognize me by sight. Thats fine. I'm at least 20 lbs less than what I weighed in high school and I was never really friends with him.

So Tom asks what we are doing there and Lupus says, "Its Catheter Man's birthday" and points to me. At this point, I extend my hand, as is the custom in America, to shake Tom's hand and formally say hi to him. I'm not sure what I expected (I'm sure not much), but what I got was, "Hi, I'm Tom." The ultimate put down. Elie Wiesel once said that the opposite of love is not hate, its indifference. I just got an indifference sandwich on rye with mustard. Lupus then told him that we went to high school together and he just then seemed to realize who I was. I then reminded him that we played on the same high school football team just to make sure that it was as uncomfotable for him as possible before I sat down with the rest of our group.

Some people may have been offended or shocked by what had just transpired, but not me. I have come to expect such meetings on the regular. I bet I would make a great covert operative for the CIA (and I would do it too, if I knew more foreign language than just how to say "beer, please" in Spanish) because I am so forgettable. Its a fact. In addition to tonight, four other incidents stick out in my mind.

The most recent was when my girlfriend joined a book club. One of the girls in the club went to college with me. I wasn't good friends with her (or even really friends at all) but we traveled in the same circles and probably met each other about 10 times and were in the same place about 600 times, so I naturally knew who she was and her name (I won't say her first name because its too unusual, but her last name is similar to Fuckface... ok not that similar, but thats what I call her now).

So my girlfriend tells me all the people in the book club, including her friend (who I went to college with also), another girl (who I went to camp with [and incidentally, probably didn't remember me either]), camp girl's sister in law, and Fuckface. I'm like, "Oh, I remember Fuckface. I think I have a picture with her from Halloween one year in college." The next time Fuckface shows up at book club, girlfriend asks if she remembers me and Fuckface has the audacity to say no (I will give her credit for being honest, though.)

Here's the thing. I'm sure I forget a lot of people's names. Hell, if I just met you, there is a good chance I won't remember your name 5 minutes later. But if I see you for the better part of 4 years and I know your name, you should fucking at least remember my name. It just pisses me right off.

My problem with being forgettable has played a part in my working experience as well. Some of you may be shocked to hear this, but I actually was once employed by a real company (albeit one that made me start out working the night shift, part-time [but regularly working 40+ hours a week], sharing a phone line with at least 3 other people, and with no benefits). This company did the television production for a sports league. Well, after all of the other recent hires had been promoted (including a few who began working after me), I marched right into my manager's office and demanded to know the reason for this travesty. Instead of coming up with some kind of B.S. Lumberg argument as to why I, out of everyone, did not deserve to be promoted, he just told me I would be working as a Production Assistant for another department.

The department I worked in included 2 people at the top who never did anything (as far as I could tell). One time during the first two days of the NCAA basketball tournament one of the VP-types saw a bunch of us watching the end of one of the games in a room and curtly barked, "Get back to work!" Once he was out of sight, I turned to one of my friends and commented, "That's the first thing he's ever said to me." I had probably been working there about 2 years. Next was my manager, who got all the requests from clients and doled them out to us. And then there was Melissa. I still have no idea what her job was, other than to kiss SERIOUS ass all the time. She must have been training to be a VP.

I had been working for that department for probably 2 or 3 months when something cool came up in New York. There was going to be a fashion show with celebrities in attendance. My new manager picked his usual favorites to work at the fashion show and the rest of us would have to stay back in Jersey and do our normal work (and probably the work of those who were at the fashion show). Well, the day of the show comes and it turns out that they need more help in NY, so those of us who were the "second choice" of our manager got to take the van into NY to the main office to help set up the event.

When we arrived at the main office in New York, none of us were very sure where to go. One of my friends from college worked in that office, so I was leading the pack around with my vague idea of where things were in this office. I went past one door and made eye contact with Melissa. Since I was never told where to actually go, I gave he the old head nod and proceeded to look around for people who looked like they were setting up for a fashion show. Just as I passed the door, I hear Melissa's shrill voice bouncing off the doorway, "P.A.! P.A.! P.A.!" By this point in my tenure, I was still pissed about how the company had been treating me (amongst others). I was still not full time, I shared a desk in a hallway, and I still didn't have any benefits. Melissa calling for me like a dog was about all I could stand. I went into the office, looked her right in the eye and said, "I have a name."

As the seconds ticked by, it became clear that she really didn't know my name and since she was in the presence of some superior who she was trying to kiss up to in the NY office, she could not admit it. I think the superior finally bailed ber out and asked me and the other PAs (who were both stunned and tickled to death by my comment) to do something. The rest of the night went off well and was highlighted by me finding out that I'm taller than Ice Cube and then smelling Carmen Electra's panties.

The "I have a name" story got around the office so quickly that Melissa was forced to apologize to me and the other PAs and even gave us a peace offering of three boxes of cards.

While reading another blog, in which the post was describing the habits of a lazy law school student, I was reminded of another instance of my supreme forgettability.

In law school these days, most classes are not like your father's law school class, with the Professor cold calling students, who are then lead down a confusing, boring, often humiliating line of questioning in order to determine if you know the material, can think like a lawyer, and can read the professor's mind. No, these days, the Socratic Method is but a wisp of the torture device it once was. In my school, the standard procedure was to assign a group of students to be "on call" for each class period, thus virtually guarnanteeing that at least that group of students had read the material and were prepared to answer questions about it in front of the class. Of course, sometimes even students who were on call didn't read and this would reflect poorly on them and maybe even get taken out of their dreaded class participation portion of their grade.

By the way, let me just take this opportunity to voice my opinion on what a load of shit class participation is. Sure, we want all the students to participate in class, but people learn differently. I, for instance, learn a lot more from listening to students questions, trying to answer them in my head, and then see if the professor agrees with me. Some students learn better by reading. Some learn by asking 30 questions a day in class. What I am trying to convey is that class participation rewards those students who would speak in class even if they did not have to, and punishes those of us who don't want to speak in class for whatever reason. Furthermore, it creates incentive to be a "gunner." You know the type, those who raise their hand at every opportunity, talk because they love to hear their own voice, and go up to the professor after class to get face time. These people are wasting everyone's time because as soon as they start talking, people just zone out. That situation doesn't help anyone. Plus, the idiot who is wasting everyone's time ostensibly gets rewarded for this behavior.

Back to my forgettability story. I believe the class was Evidence or Criminal Procedure or something of that nature. I also think that it was the second semester of my second year. Even though I am definitely the type of student that sits in the back row of every class, in law school, I made the effort to sit near the front because 1) my eyesight has progressively gotten worse with each year of trying to read the tiny print in the textbooks, and 2) I didn't want to give professors any other reason to hate me for no reason. So I have a seat in about the 3rd row on the professor's right side. I also make it a point to not miss class if I can help it because I get much more out of class than reading a bunch of cases without applying them in hypothetical situations.

A month or so into the term, my little area of the room is on call. As the professor begins calling on people around me and knocking them off like those lead milk bottles at a state fair, the time is inevitably drawing close to my turn. Usually, there is one case in each assignment that just sucks and that case is always the one I wind up with. Always. So we get to that case and the professor is looking around and I feel her eyes bearing down on me.

Expecting to hear my name and some stupid question or joke about the case, the professor looks me dead in the eye with a confused look on her face and says, "Are you in this class?" Not only was I in the class. I had not missed it once. I felt like she was trying to make some sort of joke at my expense, implying that I always skipped it (again, you can see that professors tend to hate me for no reason). Granted, the class had about 100 people in it, but I was in the front section, third row. She should at least recognize my face. This made me seethe with anger. So I figured that if she doesn't know I'm in the class, then I don't have to be on call. I cleared my throat and proudly said, "I'm a visiting student." Most of the class broke out laughing at this because a lot of them knew me and those that didn't at least recognized that I did, in fact, go to the school and was enrolled in that class.

After the laughter died down a little, I figured I'd had my fun and thought she realized her mistake so I said, "No, I'll do it [meaning the case]." Well, she apparently either didn't realize her mistake or was so proud that she could not admit that she was wrong, that she just called on another person as if I really was a visiting student. After class, some of my law school friends in that class could not believe that I 1) actually tried that, and 2) pulled it off without a hitch. I was pretty amused and impressed with myself as well. A lot of these law school professors need to be taken down a few pegs, trust me.

A couple of weeks later, with me still sitting in the same seat and showing up for class every day, the professor finally realized that I was part of the class. In the middle of class, she basically stopped everything to try and embarrass me. She said something along the lines of, "[Catheter Man], didn't I ask if you were in this class?" I said, "Yes. I was joking." She responded, "[Catheter Man] You are in this class?" Yes. "[Catheter Man], I am pronouncing that correctly, right?" Pronounce it however you want. I don't really care. "No. No. No. I want to get it right. [Catheter Man]." Basically, she just wanted to call me out in front of the whole class and let them know that she wasn't going to get played like that. Luckily for me, I had been doing the reading and headed off her little sabotage at the pass.

This is just another example of how forgettable I am. I think I was completely justified in what I did.

The first time I encountered my forgettability problem was in high school. There was this girl in middle school who had asked another girl to ask me out in the library one time. Sounds strange? Well this is the conversation as I remember it. Friend: "Catheter Man, M likes you, but she already has a boyfriend. She wants to go out with you for this period." Me: "Um, ok." Me: proceed to sit at the study carrel in the library like a deer in the headlights, thouroughly confused for the next 40 minutes. M (girl who "liked me"): nowhere to be found. Of course, I had no idea what just happened during that incident, but that did not stop me from being proud of the fact that I had apparently "gone out" with a girl, even though I hadn't been anywhere with her, or talked to her, or even made eye contact with her.

But that wasn't the humiliating part. Once we got to high school, we were in some of the same classes. Yes, the Honors world is a small one (fuck you, I am smart). In some class, the teacher made people go through the whole class and say everyone's name as part of a first day activity (weren't those the best, when you completely wasted the first day of every class?)

So M, the girl who supposedly liked me a year or two earlier, went through the whole class without a hitch and when she got to me she paused for a second or two. Of course I thought this was kind of strange, since we had been going to school together for at least 4 years by now (possibly 7, depending on which year it was), but I wasn't worried. Hell, she liked me, she would know my name. More dead air. Now I'm confused. Is this some sort of sick joke? After what seemed like an eternity, she finally spoke up and said, "I'm sorry, I don't remember your name." I'm not sure which was worse, the fact that this bitch could not remember my name or the fact that she knew everyone else's name in the class except mine. Either way, the message was loud and clear: I am completely forgettable.

This is why I kind of want to go to my high school reunion this year. I think I may be able to walk through there without being recognized by more than 5 people. I want to make fun of the bald and fat people as well as those who are trying to relive their high school glory days, but at the same time I don't want to have to talk to the people who might recognize me. Pretty much anyone who I would want to hang out with from high school, I already do, so I have no use for those assholes I wanted to get away from 10 years ago anyway.

What the fuck was I talking about?