How soon we forget

The hoopla over the seeming amnesia of Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh regarding a decades-old alleged drunken sexual attack stirred up a long-forgotten memory of an experience I had back around that time.

An old friend in a nearby town insisted on setting me up with an employee of his. He was “just perfect for me,” so said the friend. Other than the fact that Mr. Perfect and I stumbled upon the coincidence of his being the brother of my next-door neighbor and hence us having mutual friends we could talk about, the conversation was ho-hum, but the evening pleasant enough. Until the “good night” at the door, at which time all decorum and sense of decency left him. I managed to wriggle free of the groping and panting and get inside the house not too much the worse for wear.

Several years later I happened to see him seated across the room at a restaurant in Memphis with a group of people which included his sister and brother-in-law (my next-door neighbors, mind you), where he kept peeking at me through the fingers of the hand he was trying to hide his face with. To relieve his anxiety I thought the nice thing to do would be to go over to his table and speak to everyone and act as if the incident had never happened.

And what did the scoundrel do? He pretended not to know me! I went along with it as a courtesy he didn’t deserve but one I felt I should extend to the others, but later was sorry I did. JANET HILL Fairfield Bay