What's Your Name Again

In the Seinfeld episode “The Nonfat Yogurt,” Elaine starts seeing a guy who is an advisor for Mayor Dinkins. (Yes, another Seinfeld reference. This won’t be the last either; as I’m convinced during the shows illustrious run they put their own unique spin on nearly everything that happens in daily life.) Elaine pitches to the guy, Lloyd Braun, that everybody should wear name tags in the city.

In the show, the idea is a huge failure, but I think it might have some legs in my community. Because one hurdle I’m trying to overcome is remembering people’s names. I have identified two reasons why I’m struggling with the names:

1. In some cases, it is the first time I have heard a name, so I have no past recognition on my part. For instance, one guy in my town is named Faustino. It took me a couple times hearing the name before it started to click. On the flip side, one lady is named Jamie, and since that is the name of my older sister, I haven’t forgotten that one.
2. My brain is overloaded trying to listen and think in this foreign language that there just isn’t anymore room for something like a name.

Of course, there is a whole other twist to this tale. Most folks have a nickname that they go by, but when you first meet somebody, they will give you there real name and not their nickname. In one case, a member of the co-op first name is Angel, but everyone calls him Purre, which is his nickname. So, when I first got to site and people would ask me about Purre, I would have no idea who they were speaking of. None. Eventually, I put two and two together, and was able to see what was going on. And it’s getting better across the board, as I’m picking more names each day.

Still, it would be fun to do my best Frank Costanza impression around my community as I look at name tags, ”Hola, Conception”, “Buenas, Miguel”, “Adios, Adrian”.

Of course, there would be the whole issue of whether the name tags would have their first name or nicknames on them. So, maybe I’ll just avoid this political disaster, like Mayor Dickens should have.