Remembering Names Isn't Easy

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune
April 26, 1960

Hubert Humphrey would have remembered

   REMEMBERING names is a gift politicians supposedly have in abundance.  The most talented can meet and chat with you briefly, meet you again five years later and not only call you by name but inquire about your wife and five kids and ask how long little Jimmie was laid up with the mumps.

   It's never been my pleasure to meet any of these wonder men and I have strong reservations about their existence, despite all the stories I've heard about the incredible abilities of Jim Farley and other students of politics.

   I'VE NEVER met a politician or anyone else who could remember my name for five minutes.  I've been called Guffy, Dudley, Jeffrey, Goothrie, Say and Hello There, with the glad-hander making a brave show of buddy-buddy familiarity even though he doesn't know me from a bale of hay.

   I could pick a dozen elected officials who have met me and would give odds that not three of them, encountering me unexpectedly, could call me by name.  Not that I'd blame them, since I'm shy and retiring, seldom have anything to say that needs saying, and would be flustered no end if singled out in a crowd.

   MY REASON for doubting the stories I've heard about those who never forget names is not only that they all forget mine but because of my own embarrassing limitations along this line.  I forget names as fast as I hear them and even fumble when introducing my sister or brother to the folks next door.

   Once when I was hospitalized four fellows from the office came visiting and everything was jolly until the preacher dropped in and I had to introduce him.  Three of the names came readily to mind but I forgot the fourth--the fellow I ride to work with every day.

   Whenever we have four or five couples in who never before have met I either tell them to introduce themselves or turn the job over to my wife.  She is no wizard, either, but 100 percent better than I.

   THE WHOLE trouble with us easy forgetters is that we lack poise and have a low panic point.  Rather than concentrate on one name at a time when there's a line of people I'm duty-bound to introduce to Aunt Gertrude, I have them all buzzing through my head simultaneously.  Soon I am asking myself who the little bald-headed guy in the gray suit might be, the fellow I must identify after I have presented Sarah Menglekook.  He may be a lad I eat lunch with four times a week and know like a son.

   Fortunately, my wife often spots impending disaster and leaps to my rescue.  The telltale sign, she says, is a look I get which is common to anyone who has just lost a filling.

   THE WAY to remember names, she admonishes, is by association.  Meet a person named Smith who wears whiskers and you associate him with that brand of cough drops.  Perhaps Mr. Gibson is somewhat like good old Joe Gibson of Peoria.  And Mrs. Long is short, Mr. Akers earthy and Mrs. Baker crusty.  Get it?

   I get it, and have tried it, but success has been small.  I once met a man named Pond and thought I had him and his name tied together to the end of time because he had watery eyes.  Later that evening I introduced him to a friend as Mr. Rivers.

   But while the association method has pitfalls, it's probably the best there is, short of wearing the printed name on the lapel.  That is the custom at our church dinners and it works just dandy.

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