McGee: Hard to put a name on Mr. Familiar's face

Have you ever found yourself face-to-face with someone repeatedly and you can't remember their name? Try as much as you can, you just can't pull that person's name out of your biomechanical hard drive.

It happens to me a lot.

I got to thinking about forgetting names because I keep running into this guy around town and as try as I may I can't remember his name.

I see him a lot on those Saturday mornings when The Lady of the House and I go yard sale-ing.

"Hey, how's it going?" I say when I see Mr. Familiar.

"Not bad, yourself?" says he.

"Pretty good, great day for a yard sale."

You know, people like to hear their name, it's kind of an unwritten code, an unspoken message like, "Hey, yeah, I know who you are."

"I wish I could remember that guy's name," I said to The Lady of the House as we walked back to the car. "Maybe I could follow him back to his home and look in his mailbox and there'd be some letters there with his name on them."

The Lady of the House stopped and stared at me.

"You're not serious," she said. "That's kind of creepy and I think it's illegal."

"I was just kidding," I said, as I shiftily looked around.

"Next time you see him just say, 'I'm sorry, your name has fallen out of my head.'" she said.

"Yeah, and I could say, 'I'm sorry, your name has fallen out of my head. You know, I'm starting to think that stuff falling out of my head may be one of the reasons I ended up in weird places in life.'"

"You're lucky that I like you a lot," said The Lady of the House as she walked toward the car.

Grant McGee is a long-time broadcaster and former truck driver who rides bicycles and likes to talk about his many adventures on the road of life.

Contact him at: [email protected].