The young man across the room smiled in my direction and waved in recognition. I smiled back and waved as suddenly I was struck dumb. Who the heck is that? My mind wanted to know. I didn’t have a clue but unless he had just escaped from an institution, which looked to be entirely unlikely, he knew me! My memory file suddenly slammed shut, leaving me helpless to pull up a name. I turned back to a friend with whom I had been talking, hoping that the friendly guy would not come over. If he did, then I would have to stumble through an introduction. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him begin to make his way across the room and there became a desperate need to recall his name.

Suddenly the affair took on new meaning. The world brightened and I felt great relief as my memory file opened once more. Like magic his name appeared on my inter screen and I opened my mouth in greeting. Taking him by the arm, I turned to introduce him to my best friend only to stare at her as the perspiration dampened my hairline. What the heck was HER name?

You know what? I’ve got a solution for sudden memory lapses. It’s called, Pin the Name on the Person. We’ve all been asked to pin or paste a paper label on ourselves at receptions and dinners and such events where a crowd of people circulate. Why not require everybody to wear a name plate in public! That’s a brilliant idea if I did come up with it myself. In fact it would be better if that label were affixed to the right shoulder so that when you shake hands you can look right at it and see who you are greeting without having to be so obvious. Politicians are absolute masters at reading labels at a glance. We can surely learn to do that too. Reading names has to be easier than flipping through all that information juggling around up there in the brain.

Actually I think that the need for everybody to wear a name up front and conspicuous comes from the obvious fact that our memory files are already over-loaded. Take the telephone numbers of your family and friends for instance. Many of them have not one number to remember but several, including home, office, cellular, and unlisted. Besides a couple might each have several numbers, not just the ones they share.

Add to all the phone numbers the zip codes, e-mails and addresses of friends and relatives and we haven’t even started on all the personal numbers such as driver’s license, social security, health insurance, and bank accounts.

With all those numbers stacked up in there, it’s no wonder that there’s not much room for words but we need to remember a lot just to get through the day. We have to remember the password or the machine won’t give us any money. Take my advice, if you forget your password and need money right now, shaking and kicking an ATM will only produce the police.

And passwords for ATMs are just the beginning to get what you want from a machine. How about the passwords needed to open many computer programs including the very special word used to just get on line in the first place. I guess most programs are familiar with the forgetful streak currently plaguing the country, so they provide an avenue where you can be shown again and again, your key word. Well thank goodness for the smartness of the computer programmer.

So far we haven’t talked about remembering appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, and events in the community. With all those numbers, words, and dates crammed up in such a tight space, it’s got to be Brain Overload. No wonder that sometimes you can’t remember your best friend’s name.

Recently I decided to try one of those pills the health food stores push as solutions to activating memory banks. The way I understand it, they act on the human brain like a dose of WD-40 acts on rusty hinges. Gets more oxygen to the brain cells and loosens them up like oiling the hinges on a squeaking door.

So I invested in a bunch of the little pills and popped a few in my mouth. A slug of oxygen must have hit my brain immediately because I thought of Dan Quayle and I wouldn’t have thought about him for anything. In rapid fire order the names of folks long forgotten ran through my overtaxed brain cells. And then, like a video running at fast forward, memories of stupid things done , cruel words spoken in anger, opportunities missed, wrong choices made, followed. Finally I decided that maybe a failing memory isn’t so bad. If you live long enough, there is a whole pile of bad things you’d like to forget and the good stuff will always be there!