John and Jane Doe, Come On Down!

Names. If there is one thing truly difficult for me to remember, then it is undoubtedly names. That and birthdays that are not my own. Unless there is something altogether different, unusual or just plain memorable about either the name/nickname (Stitch, Puddles, +1 II, Download Festival 2010), the event surrounding the introduction (JW and BS, Mystery Google Mission 2009) or the individual, then my mind becomes a chasm for that name to fall down. It's a common failing no doubt and for some it's faces that give them the very same problem. Then for the unlucky few it's both. To counter this, when I wish to get the attention of one of the nameless or to greet them, I raid what little I do remember for ways to address folk. The resulting 'names' I give are simple; mate, dude, darling, love. This is effective so long as people (read: fools) don't name their offspring anything that is a form of social address, and, lets face it, when 'Frankly' is on a birth certificate then we can't be too far off.

Masterpiece courtesy of office computer.

  The issue here though isn't that my mind is how the French say, le shite, it's that I lose contact with people so easily. With the dawning of the social network and the almighty Google (long may he reign) it is no trouble to find people in order to continue the pressing argument of which Lethal Weapon Mel 'sugar-tits' Gibson lost his mullet in. But when you can't remember their name or at the very least their full name, it becomes next to impossible and thus you lose contact with someone quite possibly forever. A spin on this is trying to find old school friends whose surnames have changed due to a marriage. Or perhaps the very spelling of their name eludes you. The number of times my friends and I have returned from a festival, bodies deprived of sleep and saturated with enough bad food and alcohol to kill Elvis all over again, only to realise we don't remember the names of any of the amazing people we met, are all too common an occurrence.
  Recently I found myself wanting to reconnect with friends that have long been absent from my life, only to find their old e-mail address or phone number had fallen by the wayside or that their surname had up and vanished from the thing inside my head. It saddens me that for all the information available to me I can't talk to them for who knows how long, some possibly ever again. Can you think of 5 people right now who you haven't spoken to in some time? Can you readily contact each one of them? Would you want to? Unfortunately for my lost and found I am a persistent one in these regards and shall endeavour to bring them back into the fold.
  The poor buggers never stood a chance.