It is a fact that as the human body ages, noticeable changes take place on those parts that are visible, as accumulated years show on our bones and skin and teeth and hair. We who are over and above three score years are fully aware of all these changes and do our best to adjust to a life where we no longer not only look like we once did but are also incapable of doing many of those physical things in life we once did without effort.
And then there is the mental aspect of aging, which is not visible to the eyes and apparent only the ears, these changes can be tougher on us and on those people with whom we live and associate with. One of the most common bugaboos for us older folks is memories both long and short term, as we sometimes struggle to remember events and people from years before to the present when our purpose for entering a room has fled the mind in the few seconds it takes to go from the kitchen to the bedroom.
Now at 72 years, I oft times have these little memory failures that did not happen when I was a younger man, but my ability to remember names has not changed; I have had a lifetime of trouble with names. That last sentence may not be completely accurate because up until age 19 I knew many names in Greenfield, as it was small enough that many of its citizens knew each other even if they did not run in the same circles; we saw and spoke with others often so forgetting a name was less possible.
But when I got to college up in Salinas, I had a hard time remembering the names of new acquaintances; I would forget within minutes of hearing them and it was not until I saw the name in print that I could remember it. This continued into my latter years, is still the situation today and can be very bothersome not to mention embarrassing. This lack of name retention in my life made me do a little research on the subject and it seems it is not that uncommon; and of the underlying reasons for this failure, one is not, as one person once told me, a self-centeredness that rules out other people as not important enough to remember.
Because our names are important to us and stay with us, for the most part, all our lives, and it is how we identify people in our minds and in conversation when that person is not present. There are exceptions to the permanency of names, for years women of Western European heritage who, upon marriage, adopted the last name of their husbands, but that is a norm that many women no longer adhere to; my daughter is one such person.
We know that there was a time in the film industry when names were changed either by studio heads or agents because it was thought that some real names were just too unsightly or too hard to pronounce or weren’t English enough for the public. Also, many adopted screen names to better fit their movie personas, we can accept a tough character better with the name John Wayne, also called Duke, than we can Michael Marion Morrison, and a suave handsome actor is better off with the name Cary Grant than Archibald Leach. Maurice Joseph Micklewhite does not have the audience appeal of Michael Caine, and were Renee Zellweger an actor starting out 50 years ago her last name would undoubtedly get altered or outright changed. But I digress.
We just finished a show, we being the Stage Hands, and even though we worked together for three weeks, if it were not for the fact that I have a program for that show and have read my fellow actors names, I would no doubt forget the names of two of them within a few days, which is a real slight to them because they are talented ladies. And, because there were so many character names in the show, Boggs, Aggie, Simon, Madge, Tamsin (Tamsin?), Felix, Martha and William, I had nothing but trouble with lines to the detriment of the show.
I have been a patron of the King City Library for over a decade now and with one exception, Martin, I cannot tell you the names of the five ladies who always greet me by my first name and I cannot respond in kind because I am too embarrassed to ask their names. If they would wear name tags for just one week, I would be there every open day until I had read those names enough times to remember them. But one cannot require every person one knows to wear identification just to avoid the embarrassment of not being able to greet someone properly and politely.
Sometimes word association works to recall a name of a person I know only casually; there is a very nice lady in town, a fellow bike rider, who when I see her coming, I think “Beatles” because her name is Michelle. (The younger generation won’t get that reference.) So, if we, buy which I mean me and whomever you might be, cross paths and I am unable to conjure up your name, it is not because I find you and your conversation unimportant, it is a lifelong fault of short-term memory; I may know many things about you but fail to call you by name.
Now, I am aware this entire column is just an apologetic designed to find excuse for one of my many faults but because the column originally slated for this issue somehow got lost in some technical goof made by the author, so at 4 a.m. Monday morning I cobbled together three unpublished columns, which explains the lack of cohesiveness. I promise to do better in future.
Take care. Peace.
