I needed a badge to get into the room where the class was being taught. My current one wouldn’t get me past the stainless steel doors that lead to the control center.
So I went into the badging office and walked up to the counter, announcing myself and spelling my last name.
Julia was dealing with the paperwork. She was looking down, fingering thru a pile of papers, clearly hoping that my forms had already been sent in.
“Ah. Here you are,” she said, pulling my papers from the middle of the pile.
She took a black marker and wrote Friday’s date in big characters on a yellow piece of paper and slipped it into a plastic sleeve. And as she handed it to me, she looked at me for the first time.
Her face changed from one of politeness to recognition. She squinted and smiled and pointed at me.
“You’ve … you’ve been … you used to be here,” she said.
How could she possibly remember me after more than ten years?
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “Your memory’s a lot better than mine!”