A few years ago, I took a wonderful seminar in one of the clubhouses here in the Village, or the Woods, as some of you like to call it. Personally, I don’t like to call it the Woods because that immediately brings to mind the war that my adorable little dog, Lucy, has with the squirrels … in the trees … in the woods.
Anyhow, the seminar presenter suggested that we use our cellphones to aid us with any memory issues we may be having. He also gave us tips for remembering names.
This was invaluable to me. Because my mother’s cause of death was listed on her death certificate as dementia/Alzheimer’s, I work crossword puzzles and try hard to remember the names of everyone I meet to keep my mind a little sharper.
The seminar presenter also suggested that a good way to remember the name of a person you are meeting for the first time is to use their name five times during the conversation. This kind of backfired on me when I did it the first time. I said, “Oh hi, Gladys, Gladys, Gladys, Gladys, Gladys …” and before I could go on to say that it was nice to meet her, she was dialing 911 because she thought I was having a stroke.
The next time I used this technique, I remembered that the name was to be peppered throughout the conversation. Whew! That worked a lot better.
Recently, I went to see the movie “Cyrano” at the Performing Arts Center. A very nice couple was sitting in the row directly behind me, so we struck up a conversation before the movie started. I introduced myself (was able to remember my name quite easily), and then they introduced themselves, Frank and Barbara.
We talked about associating names so that you could remember them. I said, “Frank. I can remember that name because I live in Unit F and always say, ‘That’s F like in Frank.’ And I can remember Barbara because I just met a really nice person named Barbara at our coffee hour after the service at St. George’s.”
I told them, “I’ll show you how this works after the movie is over.”
Movie over, I turned to them and said to the fella, “Let’s see, your name starts with an F. Oh yeah, Frick.” And then I turned to the gal and said, “Then you must be Frack.”
They rolled their eyes and left rather suddenly. I wonder why.
Diane Duray is a Laguna Woods Village resident. Contact her at dduray47@gmail.com.
