And You Are... ?

To the woman who honked and smiled and waved at me at about 7:30pm on Tuesday, May 2, as I was walking near the corner of W. Poplar Avenue and W. Main Street in Carrboro:

Hi!  Also: I have no idea who you are. I'm sorry.

I'm bad at recognizing people. Especially if the people are in cars. It's a moving target, and sometimes windshields are tinted, or people are wearing sunglasses. And if, as was the case last night, I am relatively stationary relative to the moving car, the person in the car has a lot more time to draw a bead on and identify me.

But the truth is that one of the many personality traits of which I'm not proud is my tendency to forget names. Chances are, if I've met you, I've forgotten your name at some point. I probably remembered roughly who you are and the context in which I am supposed to know you (e.g., "that girl I used to work with, who -- that one time we did all those weird team-building exercises, one of which was to pass one team member through some sort of obstacle -- we ended up dropping" or "the wife of that guy that my friend knew from school and with whom I've had lunch a couple of times"), but I could not summon up your actual name. I may have tried to cover for this, perhaps clumsily so.

The best you can say about this is that it's kind of rude. I mean, I guess there's a certain leeway with people one has just met once, depending on how fleeting the original meeting was. But it's well-nigh inexcusable in other circumstances. One woman refused to see or talk to me again after a first date in which I called her by the wrong name -- twice. (In my defense, if there is any possible defense, her actual name and the name I confused it with were very similar; you could argue that I got her name 75 percent right. And she didn't bother to correct me either time. Also, it was a first date! I was nervous!) Even if she was overreacting (or maybe she was just covering for the fact that she didn't dig me in the first place), knowing someone's name is perhaps the bare minimum of respect one should extend to a fellow-traveler on Spaceship Earth.

I'm trying to get better. I'm devising mnemonics left and right. But if I've hopelessly forgotten somebody's name, I'll probably just own up to it in hopes that we can just laugh it off at my expense. ("Hi, I know we've met, but unfortunately I'm a complete moron and I've forgotten your name.") You hear stories about career politicians who have a savant-like ability to remember the names of every person they've ever met. I don't want to get that good, however -- I have to keep enough room in my brain for dumb facts about old TV shows and punk rock. Anyway, to everybody whose name I've screwed up or will screw up -- and at the risk of turning this into the Blog of Jerry Apologizing for His Entire Life -- I'm sorry.

Comments

[Amanda]

What was your name again?

[Lee]

There is a woman who comes to the (very small) library where I work 3 or 4 times a week, we have had many conversations, we have had conversations about her *name*. But I don't remember her name. It starts with a J.

[Jerry]

Amanda: I have no idea.

Lee: Her name is probably Jen, or some variant thereof (e.g., Jennifer, Jenny). There are a lot of them out there. (I recently got a postcard signed "Jen," and it took me a while to figure out who it was from.) Also, I almost went to library school.

[Jen]

It was me. It is always me.

heh heh heh

[Jenny]

Did you get the card I sent you, Jerry?

I have a feeling the woman who saw you didn't know you at all (yet), but rather was overwhelmed by your hot tallness and just HAD to honk. You know? I get it.

[Jerry]

Stewpants: I've received no card. (And I'm blushing.) Jen: Seriously? Was that you? Or are you people just fucking around with my head?

[michelle]

It was me!!!!!!!!!

[Jenny]

I was fucking with your head, but now I feel bad cause you think you're getting a card! It was a joke about all the Jennifer/Jen/Jenny women you know.

[jenny]

Duh, and now I remember why you might blush. (jenny p is a memory-lacking rock star)

[Jenny]

I'm so insulted you can't remember my name. Seriously.

[minty]

Because I think it would be funny to see every comment in your sidebar list be from someone named Jenny, I am going to send email to every Jenny I find through a Google search for "jenny blog" and ask them to comment. Can your interface handle 10 million comments from all the Jennys who blog?

[minty]

I'm not REALLY going to do that. Don't freak out.

[Jerry]

Okay, that's it. I'm just calling everybody Jenny from now on.

Jenny: I ain't a-skeert. I can handle all the Jennys the Internet can dish out.

[Marianne]

I'm very bad at names too and when it's someone you talk to every week, it's worse. When is the tipping point of fessing up to not knowing their name? But it did occur to me that there are people who will honk at you who don't know you, for any number of reasons. Striking looks. Toilet paper on shoe. About to walk into lamp-post. That sort of thing.

[Jenny]

Everybody knows too many Jennys. I knew one that made a mixtape for herself of all Jenny songs. I thought that was a bit much. Perhaps Jennys have to have big personalities (or at least seem to) to distinguish themselves from the other ten million of them....er us.

[minty]

Every time someone uses the words "Jenny" and "mixtape" in the same sentence, I get that blasted Tommy Tutone song stuck in my head. Damn all you Jennys!

[Jenny]

oh my GOD, minty!!!

[Jerry]

Jenny: Eep. If you've been talking to this person a while, you may be past the point of gracefully being able to ask a name. One gambit I use occasionally is to contrive to have someone else around (whose name you DO know) the next time the mystery person shows up. Then, introduce your friend to the mystery person -- "Oh, I'd like you to meet [Friend's Name]," and hope that the mystery person introduces him or herself back.

And it definitely seemed like this lady knew me, with her honking and waving and smiling. My looks aren't that striking, and I was my usual lumpen, unshaven, sweaty self. But I'll have to walk into a few lampposts and see what kind of honks I get, as a control group.

Jenny: It IS possible to make a "Jenny" mix without dragging Tommy Tutone into it. Not easy, but possible. Just ask Jenny.

Jenny: See, this is what I meant about this blog pissing off all the women in the world. In one comment, Jenny managed to offend every woman named Jenny, which is, like, 83 percent of all women right there.

[Marianne]

I guess we're all Jennys to you!

[Jen]

My name is not Jenny.

[Stewpants]

Oh Dear. I am feeling so....cheap. So many Jennys out there, and I am just one of many. And I made a bad rhyme. And I didn't even mean to!

Would y'all mind renaming me? I don't think I can put "Stewpants" on a resume. I can't figure out which Jennys Jerry is talking to in that last comments, and my stepsister is also named Jenny.

The hardships of having been born in the early 70s....

Sniffle.

[Jenny]

that's right - if you call a Jen or Jennifer "Jenny" you risk wrath. I know one Two N Jenn, several One N Jens, and a few Don't Call Me Jenny Dammit Jennifers.

I am only Jen to my parents and Jennifer to NO ONE.

[stewpants, dammit]

Gah! Overwhelmed!

[stewpants, dammit]

Ok, trying to calm down and switch this conversation to something other than the fact that there are way too many people who share my name. (Why didn't they call me Matilda or Gertrude??)

So I used to teach at UNC. I was GOOD with names. One semester I wowed my class by remembering everyone's names on the second day of class. That's 30 names, people.

Of course, after about 500 students over the course of my teaching career, I now no longer remember anyone's name.

My coping mechanism is to announce upfront that I don't remember people's names until about the 3rd or 4th time I meet them, and I am sorry. Or else I just upfront say "I can't remember your name" and usually the other person is in the same boat. Breaks the ice. It's all in the tone of voice though.

[Jenny]

what does the stew in lastewie/stewpants mean? are you a champion stew-maker? do you just like to sit and stew?