I never bump into people I went to school with

[Mustwalkmore01]

I find it odd. I returned to my home city thirty years ago (not the exact area I went to school in but the same city) but I never ever see anyone. Yes some people might have changed a lot and I don’t recognise them but apparently I look the same! A lot older of course haha.

I know some people would have moved away but I went to a big comprehensive school and I would have thought most would still be in the area. Where did they go?!

I wouldn’t be able to go up to say and say - Betty? Betty Jones, NorthDockside Secondary Modern c 1984

But I live in London and we don’t talk to anyone we see !

I discovered a few years ago that I have a problem with recognising faces (prosopagnosia). I can recognise people that I see regularly, and usually people in the right context. Otherwise they can look vaguely familiar (I once mistook the principal for a celebrity but fortunately kept my mouth shut) or like complete strangers.

Since the dc switched schools for secondary, I’ve just stopped seeing the parents I used to see regularly out and about because they’ve sort of fallen out of my memory, even though they’re probably still there. Sometimes someone will speak to me, and they sort of flicker into focus, from blind stranger to someone I know well. But even then, if I see them again (say around the supermarket a few minutes later) they look like a stranger to me again even though I know who they are. It’s a very weird (and actually quite socially disabling)phenomenon but I’m my case it’s why I don’t see people I know unless I’m in a place where my brain is primed to recognise them.

Funnily enough I was thinking today that I don’t see anyone of the school mums/dads I used to see every single day. The dc have all grown up now but why don’t I see them or their families in the supermarket or at the doctors or the local shops or anywhere? They definitely live in the area. That’s what got me thinking about school mates.

I don’t think I am unable to recognise people though. That must be hard.

I lived in London before I moved back and I’m sure it’s easier to bump into people you know there. I was a teacher and it was a small world in many ways finding out who knows who. Wouldn’t talk to a stranger though.

I've wondered about that myself OP.
For years I wondered why I seldom ran into, or even spotted someone that I went to school with.
People don't change that much in appearance, men don't anyway.
I think since I left school I've only seen three or four people that I remember or that remembered me.
The city that I grew up in and still live in has expanded and increased in population so that's probably part of it.
Then people go to uni, get married and move away and new people move into the city. We have a lot more shops and shopping centres now, plus I don't need to shop as much as I used to when the DCS were little. That's all I can think of 🤷

I have this too. I’ve apparently “ignored” or “looked straight through” friends-of-friends in the street on many occasions!

I used to bump into people from school in the highstreet but it’s dead now and people travel out to better places I assume.

I see loads! I live sling the street from my old high school and very close to my primary. It’s then kind of area where people don’t move from, or if they do, they come back when they have family. Within a literal 2 minute walk I can walk past 5 houses of people I was at school with-and it’s not a village!