Surnames

Over the weekend, as I lay in bed trying to sleep, I tried to remember the last name of one of my customers. I had a meeting with him not so long ago and exchange emails now and then. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember his last name.

I tried going through the alphabet letter by better, trying the different letter sounds to see if that would spark a memory, but it didn’t work. Then, I tried to visualise my manager saying the guys name, but that also didn’t force anything into my mind. I even imagined the guy speaking in the meeting we had, where he introduced himself to everyone - but still his surname never came into my mind. My memory uncovered lots of other people with the same first name, even some who worked at the same company as him, but his was elusive.

Late last night, as I was repeating through the alphabet again, I could feel the tingle of the memory coming into me. It was a little like a sneeze that tickles, but never comes, but the feeling was deep in my brain somewhere. In the end, it did arrive and I was able to silently smile to myself in the darkness of my bedroom as I repeated his name over and over in my head. Now, I just need to invent some sort of trick to remember his surname and hopefully it won’t disappear again.