The Name Game

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  I am terrible with names and faces.  I don’t know why this is, but I think I have it worse than most people.  I know that every now and then, for normal people it’s not unusual to briefly forget someone’s name – even people they should know.  But for me it’s almost a daily occurance.  I have trouble watching shows like “Law & Order” because they have so many suspects that I forget who they’re referring to when they mention a name half-way through the show.  I’m also constantly addressing people by the wrong name.

Well, this past Sunday took the cake for me.  In that single day, there were six seperate instances where I demonstrated this social weakness of mine.

First, in service I noticed that Orlo and Mary were there and I wanted to go over and say “Hi” to them when it came time to “pass the peace.”  But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember Orlo’s name.  Nevermind that I’ve known him for well over 7-8 years.  I needed to know because both he and his wife are blind and it would only be polite to address him by name when I greeted him and his wife.  So for the next five minutes I was actually going letter by letter through the alphabet trying to think of his name…  in my head it was like… “A”… not Albert… not Andrew….  “B”… not Bob… not Bill… etc.  My second time through the alphabet I finally stopped long enough on “O” to remember. 

So I was pumped.  I was all ready to go talk to him when the Pastor told the congregation to specifically go to at least 2 people that we didn’t know to “pass the peace.” 

Great… I really hate it when he says that – not because I don’t like meeting new people.  In fact, I really enjoy meeting new people.  It’s because oftentimes when I “introduce” myself to someone at church, they reply that we had met before… sometimes more than once.  Then I feel like a jerk.

Which brings us to my second episode.  Apparently, Susan had some friends visiting her this past weekend.  I thought they looked new, so during the “passing of the peace” I walked over to them and introduced myself.  Now, this is not an incident where I forgot that I never met them before, but rather a demonstration of what has become of me because I “re-introduce” myself to so many people.  Usually when I “re-meet” people and they realize that I forgot who they were, they give me a look and pause.  So whenever I see this happening, I immediately try to save myself by quickly saying, “Wait… have we met before?”  even though I have no idea if we had or not.  Well, this happened with one of Susan’s friends, but obviously we had never met before.  So it just wound up sounding like a cheesy pickup line, I suppose.

My third episode was in the fellowship hall after the service.  I was talking to Estelle about her residency plans and her sister in Texas.  I’ve known her for over 4 years and probably know her better than most of the people at Bethel currently do.  Then a couple of people who I knew were also visiting Bethel sat down at our table, and I started to introduce her to them.  While they were shaking hands and where traditionally I’m supposed to say… “Estelle, this is Harry… Harry, Estelle…”  I completely drew a blank on both names.  So while they were shaking hands I was saying, “Ummm… yeah… you guys… here… meet each… other…”

My fourth episode was in the Sunday School class that I teach.  I’ve been with these guys for two years now… but I still mess up their names sometimes.  I had wanted Joon to read a passage from the Bible… so I looked straight at him and said, “James, can you read the next passage?”  Luckily for me, neither of them were looking at me and James (who was sitting right next to him) started reading the passage.

Then the mother of one of my students asked me to drive her son to the picnic we were having that day.  I misunderstood and thought that she had asked me to drive him home FROM the picnic.  So as the picnic was winding down, I asked one of his friends, Nathan, if he had seen Ryan because I needed to give him a ride home.  He just looked at me funny.  Then I repeated with a little more desperation, “Have you seen Ryan? Because I need to take him home!  Remember his mom came into class asking me to take him home?”  Again he just looked at me funny… then he said, “Are you talking about Joshua?  And I thought that she wanted you to take him TO the picnic, not back home…”  I just had to laugh… number FIVE this was.

Then finally, two of Bo’s old college friends were driving away from the picnic.  They stopped to say “good-bye.”  I said, “Bye David… and bye Hong, it was really nice meeting you this weekend…”  Well, apparently the guy who I thought was Hong was actually Mike – who I had actually spent a few hours with at a “LOST” gathering several months prior.  In my defense, Mike was on the opposite side of the car as me and I didn’t get a good look at his face, but I think a normal person wouldn’t have made that mistake.

Welcome to my world.  Oy.

What’s even worse is if you greet someone by the wrong name, but they don’t bother to correct you.  Then as you’re carrying on a pretty long discussion, you finally realize that you called him the wrong name and are desperately searching for an opportune moment to say his real name to prove that you do actually know his real name.

I know this is probably going to get me in real trouble someday… like if I were to win an award or something and my speech would go something like… “And I would like to thank my lovely wife…. errrr… ummm… ehem…”