Those 70ish Girls

Have you ever had trouble recalling a person’s name, especially someone from your past? If you say, “No,” I would say, “You’re telling a fib!”

When we enter our golden year’s, it becomes harder to remember names, and it happens more frequently, at least it does for me. My retired friend, Barbara, and I went out for lunch yesterday and we had an odd experience as we chatted. We had been teachers in the same district and we were gossiping about people in our past: educators like us.

“Remember that principal at my school who got fired? His first name was Arthur and his last name started with a D,” my friend started out.

“Was he the principal many years ago and he didn’t last long?” I prompted. “His last name started with a D?” She replied that he had been at her school a long time ago and yes, his last name maybe started with a D.

“Oh, Arthur Adams. That was his name,”she finally blurted out. “Adams!”

“Well, Adams doesn’t start with a D!” I scolded.

“But it has a D in it!” she emphasized. I had to admit that Adams has a D.

I started reminiscing with her about a speech therapist we had in our school district and I threw in some gossipy snarky comment about her (just to keep the conversation interesting).

“What was her name? Hmmm. Oh, Margaret- something. Last name started with a C,” I said wrinkling my brow like Columbo or Sherlock Holmes trying to solve a mystery.

My friend thought a minute. “Margaret McCall.”

“Right! You remembered. Thank you. You have a great memory. But McCall doesn’t begin with a C.”

“But it has a C in it! In fact it has two C’s!” She had a point.

This went on for quite a long time as one of us remembered a person from our past but couldn’t remember the last name or maybe a first name, and vice versa.

We admitted that we were a good team supplying info on past coworkers’ names, but only getting part of the names. However, with each other’s help-we had supplied the person’s full name. After our lunch break, we went to several shops in my little town and bought a few things to start off our holiday shopping. One of my ex-neighbors ran a cute Christmas shop and we enjoyed looking at all her festive decorations, smelling the candle scents, deciding which ornaments to buy and admiring some cute ceramics. I introduced my friend to my previous neighbor, the shop owner, Vera : “Barbara- this is my old neighbor, Vera.” My friend asked my ex-neighbor if she could call when a certain ceramic item became available. She had liked the local ceramics artist.

“Sure. Just write your name and phone number here,” said Vera.

As we walked out of the shop, Barbara’s eyes lit up. “Hey,” she asked me, “What’s Vera’s last name?”

I had to admit I didn’t know, in fact I couldn’t even remotely remember with what letter her last name started.

“You got me there,” I confessed. “Maybe I will ask her next time and you can guess what it is. This has been a fun day”