Memory Things That Really Worked

by Chris McGinty of AccordingToWhim.com

Before I married my second ex-wife, I attended a work function for her job with her. There I met a man whose name I don’t remember, but I was assured by my eventually second failed marriage partner, and a couple of her co-workers whose names I also don’t remember, that this guy would probably remember my name, because he always remembered everybody’s names. I never had a reason to run into this guy again, but I have this fantasy that I’ll run into him one day and he’ll say, “Hey Chris.” I’ll presume that he’s just making an educated guess based on the fact that I was born in the 70s that my name is Chris, but then he’ll mention my second ex-wife by name, and say that she introduced me to him at a work party back in 1999. To that I’ll respond, “That was her name, wasn’t it?” What can I say? I’m not good with names.

                         

I once met a guy at a local show. He told me his name, and I shook his hand and told him he sort of looked like Dr. Drew. He didn’t know who Dr. Drew was, so I whipped out my phone and showed him a picture. He agreed that he did sort of look like Dr. Drew. He seemed like a nice guy, and I’d like to meet him again someday. When I do though, I will think his name is Drew.

I read once that the short term memory can only hold about seven items, so if I ever went to the store the moment that the list exceeded seven items, I would make a list. And it’s funny, because while I’m not particularly good at remembering names, I seem to remember a lot of trivia, especially music trivia. I believe this to be a combination of how I learn and how I teach the trivia. That doesn’t really work the same with people’s names.

The thing is that I can remember stuff forever, and I mean forever, as long as there’s a sort of narrative attached. I had a high school friend, and I told her how I would remember her birthday. This was before Facebook was around to keep track for us. You see, her best friend at the time was named Amy, Amy is an anagram of May, and there are three letters in May; so therefore, what’s her face’s birthday was on May 3. I’m kidding. I remember her name. I just forgot to add her birth year into my narrative, so I don’t know how old she is now.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t really work every time. For some reason, I’ve never met anyone born on September 9 with a best friend named Tres Pembe. Well, if I did, I didn’t remember Tres’s name. Besides, even if you were lucky enough for that to happen, eventually all your memory methods would start to blur together and it wouldn’t help.

Another instance is an example of me remembering something that I really shouldn’t have remembered as long as I have. I went on a trip with a friend of mine, and while we were on this trip we met a couple of young ladies. He was interested in keeping in touch with one of them, but nobody had a pen to write down her number. This was before smart phones saved us from having to retain any memories. I asked her number and made up a narrative. The area code was the regular area code, so that wasn’t a problem. The prefix was 231, because it would be 123 except that phone numbers can’t start with 1, so it starts with 2. The rest was 2719, because Kurdt Cobain died at the age of 27, and according to the Paul Hardcastle song the average age in Vietnam was 19. That narrative has caused me to remember a phone number for over two decades of a girl that my friend was into for maybe two months.

By the way, this doesn’t always work. I recently started working at Domino’s Pizza, and I met one of the drivers. He said his name was Curtis. I said that I might have a chance of remembering that, because it was one of the most common things that people mishear me saying when I say my name is Chris. This tripped me up when I saw him the next time and said “Hi Craig,” which is the other name that people will mishear when I say my name is Chris.

All I can really say in terms of memory tricks is to keep it simple, and do your best to avoid anything that might confuse you later. Also, if you’re going to memorize a phone number, it’s probably better if it’s someone you’re interested in. Good times, Drew… whatever your actual name was.

What’s his face is a blogger who isn’t really very good at remembering names. He also resets passwords an awful lot because he just can’t remember that it’s password231.