May 6th, 2006
Sometimes there an be more to an introduction than meets the eye. Or less. I have a nasty habit of tuning out *exactly* as the other person is telling me their name. I don't know why it happens, I get this brain freeze quite involuntarily. It's like I receive the information and then shut off immediately, no time to commit the information to short term memory, it falls between the cracks. I have no control over it, when I first meet a person I keep thinking about it "ok now don't tune out" and then 30 seconds later it happens anyway. Knowing a name isn't that big a deal, it's not like you have to start every sentence with their name, but it's a little tense cause you never know when you're going to need that information. So I tried to find out without asking, sometimes it takes a bit of time. When I moved into my new house, I met all the roommates and of course I missed one of the names. It took me 2 weeks to recover it.
But then there's the other side of the introduction and I've no idea what goes on there. For some reason, whenever I say my name, the other person repeats it as if to verify. As if I have such a complicated name. :confused:
Maybe the repeating thing is a way of memorising. I'm just like you, I always assume that I'll remember names and never do. On Wednesday when I was being introduced to someone, I talked with him for about an hour but still couldn't remember his name. In fact I remembered more about his handshake.
We just got new neighbours. I introduced myself, she said her name, I have no idea what it is. No idea. Now what do I do?
All is not lost, jay. Do you know where their mailbox is? Maybe you can get the name off a letter :D
Failing that, maybe some of the other neighbors know the name?
I may have told you about this but when I moved in with three other flatmates in Italy; I had no clue what their names were (not that their introduction was flawed). So instead I proposed we make a list and hang it on the refrigerator with all our names and cell phone numbers so we could always contact each other, as flatmates I said I thought it was the responsible thing to do.
If you're dumb, you gotta be smart. Or something like that... :D
One of my roommates is apparently quite keen on avoiding spelling mistakes of all kinds, whenever there is a name of a person or company or website etc, he/she (;)) will spell it out. I was surprised at this at first, but now I'm used to it.