My left knee was very sore this morning when I got up so I decided
to wait until lunchtime to run. I'm not sure what the problem was, but
it didn't bother me during the run or after. The temperature was around
eighty with mostly cloudy skies, but the humidity was higher than
normal and I felt fairly sluggish the whole run. As I finished up I saw
Patrick Felsted coming up the road just having returned from a run. I
really didn't recognize him at first as he was wearing a hat and
sunglasses, had grown his hair out long and had lost a lot of upper
body weight. He said he'd seen me just as I was starting off and I
asked him how far he's been running. I kept thinking, how come I
haven't seen this guy before...a fairly serious runner (he was wearing
a Salt Lake Marathon shirt) that lives in my neighborhood...it didn't
make sense. I was about to ask his name, but he seemed to know me, so I
kind of hesitated. It wasn't until I got back to the house that I could
confirm with my wife that that's who it was (she'd recently seen him
with his wife and knew that he had lost a lot of weight and had grown
his hair long). I had a related experience on Saturday when I
was in Subway buying some last-minute sandwiches for a Activity Day's
picnic. A guy next to me in line said "Hi Kerry!" which kind of
startled me because I didn't remember ever having seen the guy before.
I said hi back and he smiled and said "You don't remember me do you?" I
lied and said he looked somewhat familiar, but then he laughed and said
his brother-in-law put him up to it and pointed to an SUV parked just
outside. It was Jason Taylor that I'd worked with at Novell for a
number of years. I laughed and said that was definitely something Jason
would do. There are probably many occasions where I pass
somebody in a store or on the street that I just don't recognize.
People often dramatically change their appearance over just a short
period of time. I have almost no chance of recognizing most people that
I went to high school with. Karl Rove (President Bush's former advisor)
is a good example. He was thin, looked much younger than he actually
was and wore big glasses. It didn't occur to me for several years that
he was the same guy until he mentioned in an interview that he
graduated from Olympus High School. I'd imagine people would have the
same trouble recognizing me.
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