I am terrible at remembering names. Just ask my current long term partner what's her name. My inability to remember names is why my ethnic orphan workforce have 12 digit numbers tattooed on their foreheads. I suppose I could have gone with barcodes, but I'm old fashioned like that. I like to label my property. Now that I've had a bit more time to think about it, maybe I could have had their names tattooed on their foreheads or issued them with badges. It's too late to change the system now. Unless I have a coronavirus related mass cull. I couldn't do that to the poor little things though. It would adversely affect my bottom line.
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I can forget someone's name the instant they are introduced to me. I've been in long conversations with people I work with on a regular basis, where I don't know half the names. I've become very adept at never having to use someone's name when I'm speaking to them. I've started a conversation knowing a name and forgotten it half way through a sentence I started, with their name.
Then once I've worked with someone every day for 6 months and I've learned their name, I often find I have no idea what their surname is. Visitors will ask me if they can speak to Ms. Parker. I tell them I have no idea who the woman is. Only to find she sits opposite me everyday. Sometimes we even have lunch together or go for a drink after work. I worked with a guy for nearly five years. During which I called him Rodger. His name was Ed. I knew his name was Ed. If someone had pointed at him and said who's that, I'd have said That's Ed. Yet whenever I spoke to him I called him Rodger. I don't know anyone called Rodger. I've no idea where the name comes from.
I do have an idea though. At one point I tried to develop a memory system to recall people's names. It was one of those association things. Memory experts use them to remember Pi to ten thousand decimal places. Yet I couldn't get it to work on one fucking name of someone I knew. If I had to remember a list of 20 random items, using the system, it would work every single time. The pictures in my mind would take me through that list.
I'm good at memory games. I'm brilliant at the one where they show you a tray of items and then you have to recall as many as you can inside 20 seconds. So why can't I remember names? It's even more irksome than that. You know all those obscure actors from old movies? Well I do. I know their full names. I can recite the cast list of some films with the actor's name and the name of the character they played.
Now to be honest I have suffered a major concussion and a serious head injury in my life. One in a rugby match and the other in a traffic accident. Things is my memory for names was awful before them. In fact for short while after each injury I'm pretty sure my memory for names improved. Before slipping back to abysmal. It's the main reason I will always avoid people who have their prefered pronoun. As soon as I find out they use a different pronoun to the standard ones, I'm off. I can't even remember what their name is. How am I going to remember a specific, unfamiliar pronoun. Because believe it or not I don't like to offend people unless I intend to, because they are acting like a cunt. I'll go out of my way to offend them.
I've heard lots of theories why this is, but none of them fits me. How is it I can learn the Latin name of a plant after only hearing it once, while I can't recall a name I've heard several hundred times. Am I just not paying attention? If I'm not paying attention, why am I not paying attention? The mystery remains unsolved.