Book of Daze Forget People’s Names Day

We are gathered here together to recall the better-forgotten times when we have died of embarrassment as names evaporated like dew on a hot sidewalk and our tongues turned to sand, our brains to mush. We know this person who has just stopped to chat with us. Know him well, but we will not remember his name, though we try heroically to prolong the conversation, before he bids us farewell, addressing us warmly by our first names. 

The observance of such Jesus-take-me-now moments as Book of Daze Forget People’s Names Day is down to Elmer T. Riggins, a Burma-Shave salesman from North Georgia. One day in 1952, after a customer he had called on three times still did not remember his name, Riggins hired an advertising company to run four Burma-Shave ads leading up to this man’s store. The ads read in sequence, “My name is Elmer/Tell this guy/He never knows/When I stop by!” The signs did wonders for the guy’s trade, not to mention his memory. And thus was National Forget People’s Names Day born.

Some bright but forgetful puppies, when hit with brain farts that wipe out the name-face-reassembly portions of their brains, attempt to avoid name-forgetting mortification by attempting to avoid names altogether. It’s a hollow, pathetic exercise, unless you have few friends and they all have names like “Boss,” “My Man,” and “Champ!”

We can’t recommend it. Nor can we recommend any of the following coping strategies when next you go stupid over a name:

Whispering to someone else, “What’s the tall one’s name again?” just as the band stops playing. Ducking into the loo to check group texts in silent panic and running into a long-lost friend when you do.. Waiting for the barista to call [the forgotten name] out and pretending you knew the whole time.

Book of Daze Forget People’s Names Day, when all is said and forgotten, is not about shame or the sudden urge to fall upon a sword. It’s about survival. Language is slippery. Your brain is full. There are simply too many Tylers in this world..

Let it go. They probably forgot your name, too.

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