When I was a kid, I pictured my brain like a toy train on HO gauge track. There were sidings and stations, and the little train was usually able to stay on time and on the right track. It could coast into the stations, rest on a siding, maybe even take a second line, but I usually felt I was in the engine steering a pretty good course.
However, lately I’m in the caboose hoping the engineer knows where on earth we’re heading. One car was left at a siding still packed with a whole pile of energy I used to have. I’m wandering around the garden ignoring weeds and hoping the hostas grow big enough to hide the detritus beneath. Can I call that compost?
I’ve left the housework car stalled in the roundhouse. It wasn’t efficient anyway, so I’m hiring a competent cleaning lady to ferret out the dust doggies hiding under the chairs. Dusting is a hopeless task that no one with dogs should have to do anyway. If those piles of fluff are there long enough, I might get a puppy out of it!
Now I’m being careful with the coupling on the main car behind the engine, the one where I let names ride. Lately they’ve been leaping off the back just as I come to take their tickets. It’s very embarrassing to see friends and be completely blank when I want to say their names. We’ll have a nice chat, agree to meet sometime soon, and it’s only when I’m halfway home that I feel the jolt of the train starting up and the name comes running forward to pay their ticket! I vow I’ll not let that happen again, and for sure it will.
There are many mind games for remembering names and I think I’ve played them all. Here’s the thing: we have people we know from all angles of our lives: dog activities, the dear old Hub store, exercise classes, lectures, and on it goes. Someone comes along completely out of context, and my poor wee train is speeding from one siding to another searching while I stand like an idiot trying to appear coherent and hoping I don’t say something completely stupid.
There’s only one solution. I haul out my grey-hair moment, and sheepishly admit that the person’s name has disappeared on me. People are very understanding and kind. None have castigated me for being forgetful; most will admit they too are forgetting names. Do we have too much on our minds? It would be handy to be able to spring clean our brain and get rid of stuff we don’t use so we can keep the names file open and avoid this embarrassment.
Maybe after some magic age we should be handed name tags with our health card renewals. We could wear them as a badge of honour, having reached the age of wisdom where we have way more important things to remember, like where we left our glasses, or where we parked the car. Then when we meet each other, we could look discretely at the badge and confidently say the name. We want the lettering in a large font so we don’t have to hike up our bifocals to read it. We could then carry on a conversation with no fear of blurting out some inanity that references someone else entirely.
Lacking the badge, I always hope the person will throw me a little clue, such as asking if I’ve seen a mutual acquaintance. If none comes, the fun begins as I try to dredge up our common interest and hopefully the name. This all occurs in about two seconds, the most uncomfortable two seconds I can endure. Where’s the badge when I need it?
I’m not proud of my memory lapses. I know a local lady who can call everyone she sees by name. I’ve watched in complete amazement as she greets maybe ten people in a few minutes, always with some special comment. What a talent!
But I’m not going to back down from greeting people I know just because their name escapes me in the moment. I’d far rather have a chat that will lead me to the elusive name than turn away in embarrassment. Further, it could well be that we are both sending our little brain trains on the big search. The main thing is that we recognize our friends for who they are and for our shared experience, whatever it has been. Until the time those name badges are distributed, let’s keep the friendly waves, the cheerful greetings, the pleasant chats, and rest assured when we walk away, names will pop into our heads like they were always there, just mocking our momentary forgetfulness.