Aventuras De Viaje

Names are hard. I mean, how do people remember them? Even if you’ve been told before, it’s easy for them to slip away, like an ephemeral, early morning fog that dissipates with the sun.

I’m excited when I meet someone new. I meet a lot of people playing pickleball, sometimes four, five or more per day on the court and their names fly out of my head like a long serve. I hate that I forget names. I hate it when I’m playing and two points in, I want to say “Great shot <insert name>” but it’s gone. They told me their name when we walked on the court. I even repeated it once out loud, Nice to meet you <insert name>, I’m Blake.” “Mike?” “No, Blake.” and then it’s gone.

When I met George, the older Gilligan neighbour who took us fishing, we had already made a big deal about what his name might be, so there was a lot of discussion about it. George told us on the boat that his niece and her husband loved pickleball, and they played every day at Key Colony Beach where we started playing in open play, so I was looking forward to meeting them. Diane and Carman, Carman with an “A”. I said to myself, CarMAN, Car- MAN. Easy.

We met Diane the next morning out, but not her husband, Carman, because he was on the challenge court, and they left before we could get on that court. But I had seen him play and I would be ready when I saw him again. Sure enough, the next day, they were out playing when we got there. He came off on the courts and said, “So heard you went out with Diane’s uncle.” “Yes,” I replied, “He’s great. You must be Marwan.” Carman, he replied. Lisa and Leslie were beside themselves with laughter. Where the hell did you come up with that? I tried so hard.

You might be thinking Alzheimer’s, and God forbid, I may indeed have it, but anomic aphasia has plagued me most of my adult life. Yes, that’s a real thing and I surely have it. Names are generally stored in our short-term memories, and so a well-known mnemonic device is to link this short term memory with some cue, an association or prompt, kinda like CarMAN- with an A because he’s a A man, but that clever devise failed me when Marwan came out.

Logan and Sydney harassed me ruthlessly when they would bring their high school friends over, kids I had met literally dozens of times, and ask me, right in front of them, point-blank, “Dad, do you know who this is?” I panic inside. Sometimes I got away with a haha, yes of course, and then walked away, but more often than not, they’d challenge me further, “Yeah, ok, so who is?” Connor I would say and it would be Hunter. Same number of letters and both have an “n”, I considered that a win. They did not. “Da, you remember my friend?” Anna, I would say convincingly, but it would be Tiffany. The poor nameless children who came through our house for 10 combined years of high school must have felt horrible.

Occasionally, during a couple of embarrassing moment’s of forgetting adults names, I would say, “You shouldn’t make fun of a person with a disability. I suffer from prosopagnosia.: This is a real disease, also known as face blindness, but because most people have never heard of it, when I had to continue to explain it, it felt very wrong, since that disease is truly socially crippling, and I quit using that fake excuse. Plus a lot of times, I’d forget the word prosopagnosia itself, and then even as a joke it fell flat.

On Friday morning, we showed up to play pickleball and Peter, one of our new pickleball friends, announced, “Here they are ladies and gentlemen, the king and queen of the court, the best- dressed couple at Key Colony Beach!” He’s a great guy. Later, I heard him talking about how crowded his restaurant was going to be this weekend, and always on the lookout for a great tip, I asked which restaurant. Florida Steak and Lobster, he told me, voted number one restaurant in marathon 10 years straight. He was so proud, I thought he owned it. I asked if we needed reservations and he said absolutely, but just go onto the app Open Table, and put his name Peter in the comments and we’d get put in his section. He was voted best server for 5 straight years, had a plaque and everything. So no complementary drink since he wasn’t the owner, but at least we’d get personalized service.

When we turned up after the play, “Return to Sunset Village” (a blog for another time), we were seated pretty quickly. “I think I just saw Pete” Lisa said, “I thought you said Peter” Are you sure it’s Peter?” Leslie immediately interjected, quite rudely I might add, “No he is not.” But I was sure, because I actually overheard the hostess call him Petey.

When we were seated, a woman came up and greeted us, saying, “I’ll be your server. Um, we don’t have anyone here named Peter.” There were guffaws from my unsupporting family. I said, but there is a guy here who has been voted best waiter like the past 3-5 years, and she said, “Oh Billy? He’s just gotten here, do you want me to re-seat you?” No, I said, still over cruel giggles and snickers, but tell Billy I got his name wrong and that we said hi. Her name was Brennan.

Brennan basically carried on treating me the way my kids do, teasing that everyone should call her Peter each time she came to the table. When we finished a rather amazing meal (we highly recommend Florida Steak and Lobster if you’re ever in Marathon), and Brennan brought back my credit card, she said, “I hope you guys enjoyed your meal and if we didn’t mind, she and she and the management would really appreciate a TripAdvisor review. Here’s the card she handed over.

Names are so hard, but I think I’ll remember Brenda’s.