It’s not Mike again
November 7th, 2007 12:35:03 pm pst by 
Sterling Camden
Walking the dogs this morning, I ran into one of my neighbors whose name I can never seem to remember. I keep wanting to call him Mike, but the one thing I do know about his name is that it’s not Mike — because I called him that one time before and he replied, “No, it’s not Mike, it’s _______”. Now if I could only remember what was in the _______.
“Hi, Chip!” says NotMike, as we approach each other from opposite directions, each walking our respective dogs.
“Hi howya doin!” I reply, trying not to make it too obvious that my greeting is devoid of proper nouns. The look in his eyes and the way he says “Chip” make it clear that he knows that I know that he knows that I don’t know his name. I haven’t for some time now, and every time we meet he greets me by name and I don’t call him Mike or anything else. But I’m too embarassed to simply ask him his name again, and he doesn’t want to embarass me further by just saying, “it’s _______” again.
But it does seem like he should be able to carelessly slip it into the conversation if he really wanted to be nice about it. He could say something like, “Yesterday my wife asked me, ‘When will you be home for dinner, _______?’” and then I’d quickly memorize it forever. Except then I might mistakenly think his name was “Asshole” or “Aftersix”.
Why can’t he have his name sown into the front of his wool cap or tattooed on a visible body part, so I could discreetly read it? But names in tattoos are almost always either girlfriends or moms, and nobody has their name sewn on their clothing after about the third grade.
Couldn’t he stick a temporary name tag on his chest? He could excuse it by saying he forgot to remove it from his jacket after attending a conference the day before.
NotMike’s dog Kiki (funny how I can remember her name) was always cautious around Halley — but now that I have two over-exuberant yellow labs, NotMike has to keep Kiki on a short leash when around them. Kiki strains at the leash and growls at my two puppies, who likewise strain at their leashes in an attempt to inflict on Kiki their standard greeting of Death by Licking. It provides a good excuse for cutting our uneasy conversation short and proceeding on our separate ways.
“Goodbye, Chip!” says NotMike.
“Have a good one!” says I, not calling him Mike.
Maybe one of these days I’ll call him “NotMike” and see what happens.
UPDATE: I finally apologized for forgetting his name and asked him what it was. He replied, “Mike.” So not only could I not remember his name, I also couldn’t remember the wrong name I called him that one time. Unless, of course, he read this post and he’s playing with my mind.
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OK, here’s what you do.
Next time you pass each other, call him NotMike. After the inevitable explanation, you can both have a good laugh, and then he’ll tell you what it really is(something like “It’s _____, you bonehead dingbat Chip.”
Then when you write about that (further reinforcing it in your long-term memory storage – I mean the blog, not the brain) you’ll never forget it again. Plus it’s fodder for another post!
Problem solved! That’ll be three bucks.
Hey, the strikethrough code didn’t work for the words “bonehead” and “dingbat”. Sorry ’bout that! :-\
Hmmm. Let’s try
this.What did you try before <strike> (which is not XHTML-compliant), <del>?
Well, after I waved a chicken bone over a bowl of ox’s blood, I used the “i, /i” tags instead of “strike /strike”. THEN I read the fine print below the comment box and realized my mistake. *sigh*
sneak over to his house, open his mail box and read the names on the mail…its slightly illegal, but it’ll get you there.
or just call him ‘dude’ LOL
Two most excellent suggestions, GeologyJoe! I’ll call him ‘dude’ until I can locate his mailbox. I like the illegal angle — it makes me look more like a sleuth and less like a dork.
Open his mail box and read the names on the mail, how funny!
Yeah Dallas, except that looking through my mailbox at all the junk mail addressed to OCCUPANT and all the incorrectly delivered mail I get, I think it’d still be pure luck to find something with his real name on it.
That’s True, I’m always having to give our neighbors there mail since the mailman cant ever get it right.
We have such a problem with it here that we don’t even have our mail delivered to our house. We pick it up at a UPS Store.
Sure; go ahead – read his mail! You’ll have plenty of time to catch up on your blogging from jail!
Thanks, Robert! I’ve been looking for a way to have more blogtime.
Pretend you’re sending out invitations for a bogus party, then say “Who should I make it out to? 0_o”
Or put a wiretap on his phone. =D
Well, Acom, the wiretap could get me in *big* trouble — but the party invitation idea could work pretty well! Of course, then I’d either have to follow through and throw a party or come up with some sort of excuse for canceling it.
Haha! I was going to tell you to take a peek in his mailbox, but someone already beat me to it!
I’m amazed by all the creative ideas people are coming up with — might lead to its own post.
I finally found out his name. You won’t believe what it is. See the update at the end of the post.