Frequently, these days, when I see people, I am no longer sure I know them.

I’m also no longer sure I don’t know them.

There are many reasons for this failure of recognition, some obvious. Certainly, mental decline accounts for a portion of the deterioration. I’m getting older. I turned 61 this spring. I've entered that third tranche of 10,000 days that people sometimes get, the first two being youth and middle age.

Yes, it’s true, my eyesight has been going for about 15 years now. So, all those human faces are unclear unless I’m wearing the right eye wear and approach closely to examine them.

Then, the people I knew all look different now. The beauties of my youth are grandmas (or, worse, no longer around). I see the outlines of someone I knew, but is it him, hair all grey or gone, thick where he once was thin, lean face bloated, smooth cheeks slack?

Also, I've seen so many people over a lifetime of traveling around the globe that I've encountered pretty much all the archetypes, and when I come across almost anyone, he looks sort of like a whole population of people I've seen before.

And further, I’m an extremely minor celebrity, which means that among a narrow population, I’m known well enough, and for more than a decade, people have been approaching who apparently know me, often greeting me by name. But I can’t be sure I know them. They may have seen me on TV or read something I said or wrote, or heard me on the radio. I can’t see them well, they look like people I've known, and they’re acting like they know me. Are they importuning, or did we have a nice chat perhaps some years ago?

Then, there’s just plain embarrassment. Despite having to perform in public, I freeze up mentally when I encounter someone I feel I ought to know. His name flies from my mind as primordial fright envelopes me. I look away, afraid I might have to say something. The potential smile of recognition is replaced by the darting gaze of uncertainty. We pass on as if strangers.

Some people I see perhaps once a year at most, at an event or elsewhere. And in the intervening time, they have faded from my mind. That familiar-ish person, who seems to be looking at me (or is she cross-eyed and actually staring at the drinks counter?), was she here last year, or does she just look like all the high-cheek-boned, Nordic blonds I've ever seen?

Context matters as well. I see the maître d’ from one of my favorite restaurants, but instead of being in his suit behind the standing desk in the dark entryway, he’s wearing shirtsleeves and khakis in the bright parking lot at Whole Foods. He’s waving. Who the heck is that?

And perhaps I have a weak human-memory mechanism, that wonderful capability whereby the human brain stores memories of single individuals in individual neurons. Certainly, Bill Clinton has a hypertrophied version of whatever it is I lack. This insufficiency runs on my father’s side of the family. The men, in particular, were never very good at remembering people, and both my father and his father had some form of dementia at the end of their lives.

So, I don’t expect this situation to get any better, and it’s likely to get worse. I could just take to calling everybody Butch and Betty, glad-handing my way through life as some people do. Hey, Butch, how you doing? Looking good, Betty! That way, the vague familiarity and unfamiliarity could stew together in the same pot and it wouldn't make any difference. Whether the person knew me or not, I’d have the same air of easy acquaintance, treating strangers and the not-entirely-strange alike.

Of course, there are my true familiars, my immediate family, long-time friends, immediate neighbors, and people whose faces I know because they’re famous. Despite this apparently solid ground, however, I find myself looking at my kids from time to time and asking, “Who are these people?” But that’s a failure of a different sort.