Hello, my name is...

The truth is...I have never been very good at remembering names. Recently, it has gotten worse. Almost every day someone will greet me by name, and the keeper of my memory vault, with stubborn defiance, refuses to release their name to my consciousness.

Perhaps, it is a function of age. I am 42 and approaching menopause. Maybe, it is the reality of a head packed too full of junk. As a habitual multi-tasker, I sometimes have to e-mail myself in the middle of the night just to make enough room in my head for sleep.

Whatever it is, I am challenged to pull correct names to my lips. It has gone beyond the point of embarrassment. It would be nearly unethical, and bordering on immoral, of me to continue on without trying to increase my capacity for name retention.

One article I read years ago suggested that when you select a word to associate with a person's face, you are more apt to remember their name. Armed with this nifty piece of advice, I headed out to a meeting of the PTO at Jayna's school. I was new to the whole PTO thing, and I wanted to make sure that I remembered everyone's name.

This is what happened. I moved through the room-- confident that my strategy would be the turning point in my history of "name-forgetting." I met a woman; let's call her "Molly," who was an artist. Her work was on display in a local bagel shop. I pictured the bagels perched on her face like a pair of eyeglasses. Molly Bagels. This was a piece of cake. (or a piece of bagel)

It was nearly a month later when I ran into "Molly" again. We both smiled in recognition. And, my mind went completely blank. All I could remember was "bagel." And, then I remembered the other details, but I couldn't pull up her name to save my life.

This tip-of-tongue phenomenon has plagued me for as long as I can remember. I am excellent about details; however, the name escapes me 9 times out of 10. And, I have decided to do something about it. Again.

This time I started by trying to better understand metacognition, or the knowledge of my own thoughts and the factors that influence my thinking. One theory suggests that all those little details, such as "bagels," are stored in the frontal lobe. One has to be certain that these reminders are robust enough to correctly retrieve the word you need from where it is stored deeper in the cerebral cortex. The stronger the triggers, the more likely you are to recall the correct name.

Here are a few other things I am doing to flex my metacognitive muscles:

1. I tell myself that I CAN remember names. This doesn't allow me to be lazy about it.
2. When someone introduces themselves, I stop. Pay attention. Too often I am busy thinking about what I going to say rather than really hearing the name.
3. I repeat the name.
4. I ask about the spelling. "Is that Ann with an E?"
5. I look for a chance to introduce the person by name to someone else.

I probably won't try to think of bagels on someone's face again.