Wednesday, January 4, 2012

You are who again?

My husband puzzles me. I'm not sure if it is just him who coincidentally has this particular affliction or if most men share this affliction - as in, I wonder if there's a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram when you draw a circle representing men and another circle representing people with this particular affliction.

There's about 8-10 staff people at the daycare. Julia has been going there for 3 YEARS, and my dear husband does not know any of the women's names. Or, more precisely, he knows some of their names, but he doesn't know who the names belong to. He gets all confused because more than one has brown hair or something like that.

Seriously?! 

I swear that over the past 3 years we've had tens of hours of conversations trying to discern who he was talking to that day. Because, to me, the context of who says what is extremely important. Is it just me? Or is it that the Venn diagram of "caring about context" and "being a girl" take up almost the same real estate? 

To me, if A said something then it is likely meaningless, B just says things to start trouble, C is thoughtful and I greatly consider her opinions, D could very well be on speed, E is in her own little world where there is a yellow brick road and talking scarecrows, F is smart and observant, G is just cranky, and H is too new for me to have formed an opinion.

Thus when my husband tells me that D or maybe it's E or maybe it's B - it's so hard to tell - said something, I try to contain my incredulity that his 3 years with these people has not improved his ability for name or face recognition. Nada. When I ask what the person looked like, I get, "Brown hair" (i.e., anything other than red hair) or "Hair pulled back" or "I dunno." I go through the list of suspects, trying to impersonate, and his face is still blank. I can meet someone once and remember their full name, hobbies, and vital statistics for YEARS afterward, and my husband can't remember which one is Jennifer at daycare, despite her working there for three years.

One time after an hour of me trying to quiz him to figure out who it was, I asked, "How long did it take to remember me after you met me?"

His reply: "Not THAT long."

In other words, if someone kills me in the dead of night and replaces me with someone who has hair that's not bright red and within 50 pounds of my weight in either direction, I doubt my husband will ever notice that I was gone.

3 comments:

Deb said...

Great post! I find that my own husband has a hard time remembering people too. I will be talking about various online friends that I have and more often than not he will look at me and say " (person's name) from...?" and I have to go through a long explanation. I realize this is not quite the same thing as knowing people face-to-face on a day-to-day basis but a similar trait. Sometimes he claims he has no room in his brain for useless information. To be perfectly honest I often glaze over when he tells me about people he works with unless they are frequent players in his daily report.

BTW, thanks for joining my blog! ;)

B said...

I bet S will start using the nugget from your husband: "I have no room in my brain for useless information." Ha! He'll turn the tables on me.

Thanks for having me on your blog. I love your artwork. :-)

B said...

Oh and Deb, thanks for following me! My number went up by 1, and I'm surprising it's you. :)