I used to resent giving my name to the barista at the coffee shop. "What does it matter?!" I'd argue. This isn't AA or speed dating. Why do you need to know my name. Just because you are wearing a name badge, doesn't mean that this is a long term thing.
In church this morning, I was queuing up to get my coffee (it's that kind of church) and a lady whom I vaguely recognised turned around and beamed at me.
"OH HEY!" she cried, with genuine excitement. "How are you?! Where's Clemmie?"
“Erm, at at hen do” I replied, flicking desperately through my mental files to work out who exactly this lady was.
"How's her back?"
"On the mend" I straight-batted, mentally discarding a file about blobfish as the futile search for recognition went unabated.
We exchanged small talk about Clemmie before the conversation tacked.
"So what do you do for work?"
"I'm a project manager for a bank"
"No way - my husband does something similar, he's a Business Architect"
The lady was so genuinely interested in me, I was absolutely mortified that I couldn't remember her name. I imagine it's the same feeling when you forget the date of your wife's birthday, mind-blanking, gurning stupidity.
It transpired that her husband worked for a German competitor of the organisation I work for. I was slightly relieved that he worked for someone else, as this was going to be embarrassing enough when the lady established that I had never knowingly seen her before. It could have been so much worse if I worked with her husband on a daily basis.
As we chatted further I, now resigned to my imminent social suicide, desperately scrabbled around for any clue that might reveal her name. I’m not the best people person, and this is one of the myriad reasons - my brain is seemingly too busy with other things (like remembering that Latin names of various mammals) to cope with altogether incidental things like the names of my own species.
Then, redemption! A sound carried across the throng of people currently besieging the coffee counter.
“Vanessa? Vanessa?”
The voice sounded harried, as if it didn’t have time to be tracking down a missing person.
“Flat white for Vanessa!?”
“Oh, that’s mine!” My companion replied.
She fetched her coffee, and we made our goodbyes.
“Cheerio… Vanessa!” I said, only slightly smugly.
“Bye! Love to Clemmie!”
I turned away, basking in the relief of not making a total tit out of myself. Thank god for names on coffee cups, I thought, walking face first into a door marked “Pull”.
Smooth.