OCR Text |
Show Names Slip My Mind Every year or so there appears in some publication an article on the importance of remembering person's names, other than your own, and also some instructions and methods of doing so. The first of these instructions has to do with the extreme importance of calling someone by their name without any prompting. Not only is this important but your entire social standing seems to depend upon this ability. In the political world you're "dead" if you can't remember all names in all towns. Now this emphasis on remembering names gets me so scared when I start to talk to an old acquaintance that all I can possibly remember is the thought that I have to know who it is and then my mind becomes devoid of all else. You can imagine what I then do with his name. By the Dale Carnegie standards I am not only a social outcast (I may be that but for a different reason than he is thinking about) but my future in politics would be absurd. "After the build up the article ' gives the methods to be used in recalling names. When you meet a person always have them repeat the name and then you use the name two or three times in the ensuing conversation. Now this first step is quite a feat when you are being dragged around a room and meeting about six people a minute. I am busy enough myself explaining that my name is not Holstein, In the next thirty minutes or so I am supposed to use all of these names in the conversation two or three times. I would sound like a train caller or a sergeant in the police line up. CLook the person over real well when you meet them for any unusual identifying characteristics etc, so that you can tie the face and body with the name is the next bit of advice given. This is the one I want to warn you about. The last time I tried this wa when my wife and I were introduced to a chorus girl in Las Vegas When I tried, later, to explain that my interest was only part of the social graces my wife merely said that her name wasn't Grace. A man's name and his business can be associated to help jog the memory says the book. Such as Mr. Cooper is a hooper of barrels. I do this and the next time I meet Mr. Cooper, I call him Mr. Barrel With this method a Mr. Klepper becomes a Kleptomaniac and the next time I see him I greet him with hi there Mr. Thief. I just have to fall back on the old saying that all of us use - -I can remember faces but I can never remember names. |