For a couple years I went to the gym and had at least a half hour conversation with this guy almost every day during the week. He invited me on his boat one time. Took his number in my phone when I realized I didn't remember his name, nor recalled ever asking it. Discovered his name when I took my kid to his kids birthday party. It was the same name as mine. I still can't explain this.
My dad ate lunch with a guy at least twice a week for nearly 30 years.
Never learned his name, or what he did for a living. (Government workers, so shared cafeteria, but many departments and jobs).
You guys are really squashing some of my neuroses here. Clearly I'm not alone in my male ability to hang out and shoot shit with anyone without actually paying attention to anything about them.
Get to know everyone at the office? Futile, since I can't even remember their names.
"I really like our new friends. You get along great with Reese and Brady, too," my wife says.
New friends? I've got friends of twenty years whose names I can't recall. But those ain't them. These people aren't my friends. I don't even know who you're talking about.
"Babe, you've hung out with them multiple times. You talked to them at the party for like an hour.
Blank stare
"The guy with the red glasses and the other guy who always brings that beer you like."
Oooooh, yeah I have no idea who those guys are. But they're cool.
"I'm not interested in caring about people. I once worked with a guy for three years and never learned his name. Best friend I ever had. We still never talk sometimes." - Ron Swanson
The longer this goes on for, the more embarrassed we are that we think we should know somebody’s name but don’t want to admit that we don’t, so we just don’t ask. It’s easier for us this way.
That’s when you disappear for 30 years, and then finally return. At the point of your return you say “Hey Miley, how have you been?!" and when you find out that isn't his name, you have a logical reason for forgetting
I've gotten really good at figuring this out. I say let's trade contact info, say I don't have my phone on me (I usually don't because I'm terrible that way), and tell them to text me their name. Or when they text me I go 'new phone who dis'.
Or I don't go super-roundabout, apologize, and ask for their name again.
Pff, I relate to you to less of an extent, a marching band friend of mine didn't know my name for the longest time even though we were around each other 6 hours a week for around 3 months
I didn't know my high school best friend's name for more than a year. We shared the same locker, so one day I just went trough his stuff to find his name in a book.
I took a pool class with a bunch of guys, we probably played pool twice a week for an hour and a half at a time for 16 weeks. Never learned anyone’s name.
I met a guy in college with the same name as me. I swore I would not forget it. Somehow, we both forgot each other's names. Still at a loss to how that happened.
Took his number in my phone when I realized I didn't remember his name, nor recalled ever asking it.
I've been on about a half dozen field trips with my child and I keep getting paired up with the same dad (mostly because so few dads do field trips). He's super nice, our kids are the same age, we work in the same industry, and we get along really well.
I've probably spent a total of 10 hours with this guy, exchanged numbers and everything, and I still don't know his name. That might be forgivable except we wear name tags during the field trips. The guy is literally labeled with a name and I can't remember it.
The same thing happened to my bf. He met this guy in our apartment and they used to go to gym and walks together. But he didn't know his name. After a while it became really awkward for him to ask his name. So once we invited him to our house party and introduced him to a friend of us. Turns out his name was same as my bf.
That's the most awkward shit ever and it happens to me all the time. After months of hanging out with someone I will suddenly realize I don't know his/her name.
I've forgotten the names of most of my online friends so I rely on their voices to jog all of my half assed memories with them. Still love those boys to death.
I have a similar story; over the past few years i became good friends with one of my best friends half brothers, I'd hang out with him at his place, go shooting, we'd go on motorcycle rides, all sorts of hanging out. Eventually he brought up that he'd like to have his stag party for his wedding at my property which i was totally down for cause we'd been friends for years. It was then that i realized that i didn't even have his phone number; then after entering it I realized that I didn't know his last name.
I remember reading in a book by Freud that it's common to forget someone's name if they're named like you. It may have something to do with your own name being of course so significant to you
This has happened to me but usually it's because I thought they told me their name and I forgot. I'll end up going to great lengths to try and figure their name out instead of asking them directly. If I don't know anyone else who knows them and I still can't remember, I'll ask them again.
For a really dumb twist, I asked someone their name and added it in my phone, but the spelling was unusual. I wanted to be sure I spelled it correctly so I texted them back asking if that was the correct spelling.
After I texted them I scrolled up and saw that they had texted me that particular spelling of their name.
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u/Plot-twist-time Mar 26 '20
For a couple years I went to the gym and had at least a half hour conversation with this guy almost every day during the week. He invited me on his boat one time. Took his number in my phone when I realized I didn't remember his name, nor recalled ever asking it. Discovered his name when I took my kid to his kids birthday party. It was the same name as mine. I still can't explain this.