Forget me not

A couple of days ago, while I was at the gym (I know, I was at the gym!), I saw a girl who went to high school with me. I have never spoken to her in my life, I don't even know her name- she was just a face I saw regularly in the hallways for a few years. We didn't acknowledge each other then and we certainly didn't show any sign of recognition of each other two days ago. Despite going to the same high school for three years (she was a year older than me), we are strangers to each other. We both continued running and sweating on the treadmill and went our separate ways after our workouts.

However, seeing her got me thinking...

She and I have never spoken to each other, we have no mutual friends in common, and I haven't seen her since high school... There is absolutely no reason for her to have reserved even the tiniest bit of space in her memory for my face. Yet, I did for her.

Why? Just from the repetition of seeing her at school?...

And how often does this happen?

I have worked in customer service for a while (too long of a while), and I still recognize faces of customers that I have barely spoken to. Or, I have seen the same person shopping at the grocery store every so often, and for whatever reason, I remember their face.

Do they remember mine?

Do they feel a tiny bit of familiarity when they see my face like I feel?

Maybe it is just a small part of human nature to seek and remember faces- seek out people like us, like a watered-down survival technique? Or is a psychological thing that my brain does subconsciously?

Or, am I completely crazy and I am the only one who has a storage bank of random faces in the back of my mind?

For just recently passing 7 billion people in the world, it certainly can feel small sometimes.

Or maybe it just feels small as I start to think of moving somewhere else where I won't recognize any faces...