Every so often I attend an event that is popular with the hipsters and the twentysomething crowd in San Francisco. There I recognize at least one person. The name escapes me. Is it someone that I abhored? Someone I stared at, possibly admiring her shoes but never had the guts to cross the room to compliment her? And perhaps she stared back at me with a nasty glance that said why are you so weird? Or was it someone that I spoke with while standing in line giddy with sugar that exclamation marks were coming out my head? Or was it a friend of a friend that I met at a party where I cowered behind my red Dixie cup of water and mumbled some coherent small talk?

And I spend the rest of the time fishing for the name. Fishing for the moment. Like, dislike, friendly or not friendly…

There was once that I saw someone afar. I spoke outloud and said to my friend, “I can’t remember him…I don’t remember where he’s from…is he from a movie?”

And my friend laughed and dragged me over…turns out it was someone who I had stared at because he was talking with the birthday boy for awhile…at a recent dinner. The staring akin to a movie star.

Today at the Spark: Sugar Rush event (which had fabulous desserts…most unfortunately were chocolate), I saw some people I knew. There was an Asian girl. I knew she probably didn’t recognize me since we met only once, but when we did meet…I felt like we had clicked and were buddy buddy. But that was in February. And here we were and I couldn’t remember her name.

I lightly waved to her once, but she didn’t blink. And I kept racking my brain trying to remember her name so that I could approach her and say “Hey [insert name here]. We met at [insert event].”

Then when we were about to leave, I looked down at my phone, almost intent on logging onto to my social networking websites to find her name…when it suddenly hit me. Nance. I spun around on my Brazilian shoe heel that pinched my toes…and she was gone.

A face and a name. All very the same. And losing once again the game.