A story from childhood

Day 18 of the challenge: Tell a story from your childhood. Dig deep and try to be descriptive about what you remember and how you felt.

This is hard, mainly because while my mind is like a steel trap when it comes to facts or things like what our home phone number was from age 3 to age 9 (814-864-7637), I don't always remember events very clearly. But here's one that I think explains some of my insecurities that I wrote about it earlier this month.

There were a couple summers that my family went camping at Cook Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania. This particular year I was maybe 10 and while we were in the parking lot my parents spotted some friends who just happened to be there the same week. My dad told me to go over and let them know that we were there. So I did, and it certainly never occurred to me that I should tell them who I was. I said "my dad wanted me to come over and say hi" and they didn't recognize me. I was embarrassed and felt silly, and to this day I just assume that people won't recognize me. Of course now I realize that my going over there was completely out of context so of course they wouldn't know me right away, and I also realize that just because I'm good at remembering names and faces doesn't mean everyone is.

I'm not saying this one incident scarred me for life, but obviously it has stuck with me.