Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed for December 31, 2012

better to admit it, then try to bluff it … never works for me either.

I had forgotten the head band and off-the-shoulder look of the early 80’s. Right out of a John Hughes movie.

She remembers Yaz Pistachio and he can’t remember Sue??

Maybe she thinks it is Swahili for “See ya later!”

…i now pre-empt this embarrassment by telling everybody I’m introduced to “Please don’t be offended later if I forget your name – I’m terrible at remembering them…” and inevitably the other person looks relieved, and says “ME TOO!” (The ones who look offended at my request are people who’s names I wouldn’t want to remember anyway…)

Having spent 35+ years as a classroom teacher, I have a lot of names to forget. Faces, I remember, but names are something else. I bumped into a couple guys at the mall who looked at me and said, “Don’t even try to act like you don’t know us”, I told them that I recognized faces, but not names. The left offended and I remembered one as a face I wanted to forget and the other as a guy who never caused any problems, but then he never did anything either.

Yaz, who was “Yolanda”? Sue is eminently forgettable; Yolanda is not….

I have bigger worries, like “What’s MY name?”

… that could work well. Me? I ask them for their card…

Forgetting someone’s name is acceptable. Calling a woman Sarah when her name is Melinda is neither forgettable nor forgivable (although there is disagreement; my wife, Melinda, says neither; my ex-wife, Sarah, says it’s perfectly fine).