I Can't Remember Your Name 0:00
I can't remember your name. Seriously, I really can't. If I run into you in public, please show a little mercy as I stammer around, pretending I do. There's a word for my particular affliction: lethonomia. No, no, this is not an episode of Spectacular Vernacular, though I can't resist telling you about this magnificent, obscure little word. Thanks to some dusty corner of my brain where high school Greek mythology went to die. I can tell you Lethe is one of the five rivers of Hades. Drink from its waters, and you forget your past. And the daughter of Eris, Lethe, is the goddess of forgetfulness and oblivion. Hey, you, back row, stop yawning. I promise this is leading to a good story, so hang in there. The second part, nomia, evolved from the Greek word for name, onoma. So, lethonomia — the inability to recall names. It's a very real condition. I know. I have it. My brain is a steel trap for useless trivia, such as the obscure word lethonomia, but a Teflon pan for the names of people I've met. I am insanely jealous of friends who are masters of recall. They'll bump into someone on the street, and launch into a full biographical update. Bob! Is that you? Man, it must be 40 years. How's your wife Mary? And the kids? Jason, Tonya, Billy, and Sally? All this for someone they met once, briefly, at a sparsely attended art gallery opening in 1983. Me? I run into someone vaguely familiar in the grocery store and my brain becomes a dial-up modem from 1995, screeching and sputtering as it tries to connect to a server that no longer exists. All I can manage is a panicked, "Oh hi, uh you." They'll give me a pitying look and say, "I'm George, your neighbor. We share a fence." I always claim it's a context thing. See, if I see George in his yard, wrestling with his rogue sprinkler head, I'll cheerfully call out, "Morning, George." Well, most of the time, I have been known to call him Gary or even Max. But put George in the dairy aisle, and he might as well be a complete stranger trying to sell me a timeshare. Worst of all, I can't even blame genetics. My father was one of those people who knew everyone's name. Some sort of black magic was at work. We'd be running errands in town, and he couldn't take ten steps without someone stopping him. He'd grin, clap them on the shoulder, and rattle off their names without a single bead of sweat. I was stumped. "How do you do that?" I'd ask. "Associate their name with something about them," he'd say. As if it were that simple. "Roger has red hair." See how easy that is? Sure enough, the next time I saw a man with red hair, I'd confidently blurt out, "Richard!" Figuring the R sound was close enough for government work. He'd roll his eyes. "It's Tim." One day, my father offered a huge confession. Sometimes, he admitted, "I don't have a clue." Aha! He's human! A shocking conclusion for any kid. "What do you do then?" "Make it easy for them," he'd say, "to tell you their name." He demonstrated when we ran across a forgotten acquaintance of his. He stuck out his hand and boomed, "Long time no see. I'm Don." The guy smiled and replied, "Hi, Don. Great to see you. I'm Jerome." Genius. Simple. Foolproof. So I tried it. I saw a familiar face at the office coffee machine. I stuck out my hand with practice confidence. "Hi. I'm Kirk." He looked at me with a blank, pitying stare. "I know. We've worked in the same office for three years." He'd walk away, leaving me hanging. To this day. I still don't know who he was. Which brings me to my story. After college, I joined one of those big international accounting firms. Prestige. Glamour. At least so it claimed in their recruiting brochures. One of their requirements was that we attended those after-work networking mixers — a personal circle of hell for someone with lethonomia. A room buzzing with forced gayety, smelling of ambition and lukewarm hors d'oeuvres. My only goal was to survive without trying to hand my business card to my own boss. Naturally, knowing my weakness, I gravitated toward events where participants wore name tags. There, at least, I had a fighting chance. Provided I recognized the person in the first place and realized I knew them, and their handwriting was legible, and the name tag wasn't flipped over or hidden under a lapel. After one such event, my social battery wasn't just low, it was leaking acid. All I wanted to do was go home and collapse on the couch with some junk food. But when I climbed into my poor car, parked in a remote corner of the parking lot so no one knew what a clunker I drove, I discovered my gas gauge was kissing empty. Desperate to get home and sulk in my personal cave, I pulled into the very first convenience store I saw, a place I had never entered. Now, for my younger fans, this occurred back in the prehistoric period before you could just tap a card at the pump and avoid human interaction. No, I had to go inside. I grabbed a dubiously constructed pastry—this was long before I started counting calories—and approached the counter. The cashier, a guy about my age, was engrossed in a magazine. He looked up as I approached, and his face lit up as if he had just seen a winning lottery ticket walk through the door. Well, I'll be, he said, his voice full of genuine delight. Kirk, how are you doing? I froze. My mind was a snow globe of forgotten faces, floating in a haze of memory. Nothing. Not a flicker of recognition. I couldn't even use my father's trick, not that it had ever worked. He had already called me by my name. I fell back on my trusty, pathetic standby. Oh, hi. Good to see you. He shook his head, still beaming. Man, it's been a long time, Kirk. Twice. He called me by name. Twice. Without a hint of hesitation. Meanwhile, I was drowning in a sea of anonymity. Yeah, I mumbled. It's been ages. I can't believe high school was so long ago, he sighed wistfully. Aha! A clue! I deployed another of my father's tactics. Association. Oh, yeah. Especially that one class we had. What was that teacher's name again? I asked, hoping for a memory jog. He laughed. Which one? Seemed like we had every class together. I was now hopelessly lost. Frantically racking my brain. If only this were a corporate chain convenience store where he'd be wearing a uniform and a name tag. But no such luck. Just jeans and a t-shirt. He kept jabbering as if we were long lost best friends. Hey, have you heard from Maria? I haven't seen her in forever. Maria? I wasn't sure I remembered a Maria. But that didn't mean she didn't exist. I didn't have time to resolve that mystery because he continued to fire names at me like a verbal machine gun. Barbara? Mike? Pam? Brent? I just shook my head. My panic rising with each mention of some forgotten classmate. Desperate to escape, I paid for my gas and my pastry. He rang up the sale but paused as he tortured me with another remember when story. When he finally handed me my change, the transaction was complete. I had my freedom. It was great seeing you, I said, already turning to flee. Hey, Kirk, he called out. Before you go. I turned back. Bracing myself. He pointed a finger at my chest. A huge grin spreading across his face. You really should take that thing off when you leave. Confused, I looked down. Stuck to my suit was a name tag from the networking event. Proudly displaying my name in large block letters — Kirk.
9:18
He had me. Hook, line, and sinker. I can still hear his laughter echoing in that little store. You know what I did? I laughed with him. It didn't matter I was the butt of the joke. It was hilarious. Utterly brilliant. Perfectly played. He reached out for a handshake, a peace offering, to assure me it was all in fun, and uttered words I'll never forget. Thanks for taking the joke so well. My name is Paul. At least, I think it was Paul. Could have been Peter. Maybe it was Sam. Something like that.