What’s your name? I got the answer

Daniel Johnson
Art Editor

Coming back to school from a summer of vegetation/hibernation I am continually surprised at how much important information has been replaced by obviously useless drivel.  My summer memory retention is limited to Sigmund Freud’s mortal fear of ferns and that an oyster changes sex several times throughout its life.

I never forget extraneous information like French conjugations or my grade in Sociology, but important things like my mailbox combination, the number of stairs to the Fieldhouse, and peoples’ names seem to slip my mind. I’m convinced that the hermaphroditic properties of oysters are to blame for my criminal forgetfulness.
The good thing about forgetting these things is that in most cases you can rectify the problem pretty easily. I looked online for my mail combination and I will count those stairs at the next Convo. But I seem to have the most trouble with peoples’ names. The stairs don’t feel bad when I forget their step count but when I call Samantha “Stephanie” I hear a small whimper and witness a pained look.

It’s especially bad because I am asking “hmhnmumblehum” how their summer was and I am thinking “I had freshman seminar with you. We ate an awkward lunch together that one time.” But no name comes. I’m sure mental slips like this happen to everyone. I mean it’s expected to forget a few names, but I am convinced that I’m a special breed of forgetful. I meet someone and then suddenly introductions are done and I’m asking them what their major is. I can assure you now that after hearing their major and life aspirations, it’s not a good time to mention: “I forgot your name that you told me 47 seconds ago.” Unfortunately  the “I’m-really-bad-with-names” ploy doesn’t work anymore. You might really be bad at names, but everyone secretly harbors hatred in their soul for name forgetters. So honesty will rarely work.

Here are several important tips that can help you out of these situations. The first is to introduce a friend. You touch them just slightly on the shoulder and say: “This is my friend Scott.” And then they will shake hands and the unnamed individual will say: “Very nice to meet you my name is . . .” and there you go. But sometimes you don’t have a willing friend and the introduction technique doesn’t work as well if you don’t know either of their names.

A solid technique is to ask for a screen name, e-mail or phone number. As they are writing the crucial information you mention in passing: “You should throw your name above your number. I don’t want to get the number confused.” This has been known to backfire. “What is your e-mail address?” “Oh, you don’t need to write this down. It’s my name at Pepperdine dot edu. Easy, huh?”

The last trick of name avoidance is to avoid all names. Use substitutes. “Hey . . . sport, bucko, tiger, honey, love, sunshine, sir, ma’am, scout, you, dude, fellow, pal, buddy, comrade.” They are all acceptable options. It’s just up to you to use the one that fits best. For example if I call “unknown male” from the rugby team “sunshine,” he might suspect something is amiss. So I bid you choose carefully.

Nametags would be the most obvious solution, but that won’t work because nametags make you feel like you are at a church mixer. My answer is more monogramed clothing and the revival of the personalized embroidered handkerchief. The odd personalized key chain from Disneyland can also do wonders.

So I bid you all to replace your wardrobes and until then be kind to those of us who cannot remember who you are.

09-09-2004