Had a strange faux pas today

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I thought I don't do that anymore, but apparently I was wrong. I met someone I knew in high school, and after she said, "Alex?" I said, "Wow, it's you, I completely forgot you even existed!" Well, not exactly, but close, because it wasn't in English. I didn't mean to be mean, but it was true and I just said it without thinking. She was like, "gee, thanks," then we exchanged a couple more words and went our separate ways.

It's partly the other person's fault for being too sensitive and ready to feel offended.

I once saw a girl I knew coming into a club in university I was in, and I said "Hi, so nice to see you again, I haven't seen you around in a few months!" This girl happened to be Chinese, which was of no importance at the time.

Later on people began telling me she was going around saying I was racist. She was telling people that my saying I hadn't seen her around lately really meant that because I was white, I thought Chinese people were insignificant, and therefore anyone Chinese was invisible to me because I selectively ignored them. I was "obviously" putting down her heritage with my greeting.

I don't think your "faux pas" was that bad; she had the choice of how to respond to it, and she chose to become offended. In fact, she would have had to admit that she herself had forgotten that you existed, too. Then you could both be dreadfully offended at each other I suppose, and it would cancel out.

It makes perfect sense to me, you forgot completely about the person because you havn't seen them in years, but to an NT that is recipe for an insult. To an aspie / autism person it actually means that you were pleased to see them again and surprised at your own memory loss, it's not like you can be expected to remember every person from school.

I actually did this to someone from uni a few years ago, he said "remember me from uni" and I said "no"! Then I remembered him, I think he was kind of upset about that. More recently it happened the other way around. I thought I knew a guy pretty well and started talking about things that had happened years ago. But aparently he didn't remember me though and deliberately made a point about it by saying, "It's [my name] isn't it?". That guy had turned into a bit of a dick and had lost his feelings though, not the case in your situation, you never meant any harm.

I once remembered someone perfectly - only after some discussion iyt came out he was somebody else.

My tendency is to say so little possible - I CANNOT predict when someonew will take offense, better to offend by saying nothing.

I would not have found your remark offensive - but who am I?

I've done worse. This may make you feel better lol. I was in a bus about a year or 2 after high school (I was in college), and a guy who was sitting in front of me turned around, said Hi Shadi! how are you doing? its been a while ... and I had NO idea who he was so I suppose I had a puzzled look in my face ... then he started trying to remind me of different things in high school so I would remember who he was, like remember I was sitting there, I was doing this and that, we had that teacher, etc and I finally was able to remember a little bit, but I felt very bad, I just couldn't remember his face at all. What you said to that girl was litterally true in my case lol.

It's better than when you run in to someone from high school and they say "Wow, I was just thinking about you the other day." I always just want to wrinkle my nose and say "Why? I haven't thought about you since graduation."

That's a not so common, but not rare saying which usually just expresses that you missed someone.

Thanks for the replies, people. Shadi2, that's a funny story. I'm not blaming her for being offended by what I said. The whole thing looks kind of funny to me now.

Very easy to do.

There's was this guy at work who I didn't really notice was gone for at least a month, possibly longer. Then one day he showed up at work and he probably said hi to me. I said something like, "oh, I didn't think you worked here anymore." But he laughed, and said, "nice to see you again too, _________".