Everyone should have to wear a name tag

I attended a wedding last Saturday. The marriage of Anne and Peter was a beautiful ceremony, on a beautiful day, and a shared joy for those of us privileged to be there. Come to think of it, I love weddings and I cannot fathom how some people say, ‘I hate weddings’. I hate funerals, if you want to know, but weddings are the opposite in terms of emotions; happiness begets happiness and I am therefore a fan of happy events.

Anne is a local girl so therefore I knew a lot of the guests beforehand… or at least I should have done! Remembering names – especially on the spot, is a problem for me… and getting worse by the doddery day.(Ask Orla, whom I have known since she was a toddler and yet I addressed her by two different wrong names on Saturday!)

So moving quickly on: the problem of names is multiplied for me due to the fact that a couple of generations have grown up behind me. I expect other people’s children to remain as I have last seen them… and they don’t! They know me (‘you haven’t changed a bit!’) but alas, they have changed so much that there is no point in returning the lie. Then there are the beautiful women of all ages, ones you might say couldn’t be improved upon… but cometh the wedding, cometh the transformation and the voice is the only clue you have to go on. And so… we’ll leave that one there as well!

I struggle with names a lot and sometimes I make a right eejit out of myself. The strange thing is that with certain people, I just get a mental block when I come to address them; while on the other hand, somebody I met twice 40 years ago and the name could roll off the tip of my tongue. Sometimes I bluff, hoping it will come to me and this is where the quicksand of getting it wrong usually sucks me under.

My [lame] excuse is that I know so many people from different strands of my life that I can’t be expected to remember them all… but it doesn’t wash. When I owned Paddy’s Point pub in Spain, I came up with a plan to make my excuses in advance. Over the bar I had a blown-up poster photo of myself looking confused, (no bother finding that!) with the caption. ‘THIS MAN HAS THE MEMORY RETENTION OF A GOLDFISH; PLEASE BE PATIENT WHILE HE STRUGGLES TO REMEMBER YOUR NAME!’ It got me some sympathy and understanding, but did not help with the underlying problem.

A person’s name is the most important thing about them. I make a habit of using it in conversation while I’m talking to a person. This makes my frustration more exasperating when the name eludes me. Then, as Mrs Youcantbeserious will tell you, I overuse the name to compensate for not knowing it at the start – if you get my drift like.

Over the years I have tried all the recommended techniques to help my memory of names. ‘Picture the name written across their forehead,’ I read somewhere. In my case, I’m afraid the writing is done in invisible ink. ‘Name repetition’ is another tip. Well, as I have already told you, I do that one – and all it does for me is to make it more obvious when I can’t remember the name next time. ‘Building a rapport,’ they said. For god’s sake, if a rapport was a bungalow, mine would be a skyscraper… and I still can’t remember the rapportee’s name. ‘I know your face, but I can’t put a name on you,’ I admitted to a customer who was liberally using mine. ‘Well, you don’t know my face either – because this is my first time here!’ came the heart-sinking reply.

The experts still go on insisting that same as muscles grow stronger with exercise, the brain can be trained to remember names. ‘Remembering by association’ is one such exercise. I won’t tell you again about the guy who went off to a memory clinic for three weeks because he couldn’t remember names. On his return his tortured brain had to file through flowers to come up with one with green leaves, thorns and a red flower – to help him remember his wife’s name.

We always keep the good news till last in YCBS; and I have the answer to this name calling dilemma. The solution is so simple you will wonder why nobody thought of it before. It came to me as I was drooling over orange cheesecake and cream at the wedding. The government has to make it compulsory for everybody to wear a name-tag! End of problem! Our EU Commissioner can garner serious status by having this proposal adopted and becoming law in Europe. Just first names is all we need; I’ll leave it with you…

Don’t Forget

Memory is the faculty that enables you to give someone MOST of your Eircode.