-- I am mortified.

So I work with a guy who's name I just can't remember. Despite being introduced to him several times by other people and running into him in the hall, I somehow associate him with the name "Mark" because he reminds me of an old coworker I really liked a while back.

Anyway one day I see him in the hall and I sing out, "Hi Mark!" and he says, "I don't know why you're always calling me Mark." I apologized profusely, saying that he reminded me of someone else. He told me his name then, but I was so horrified by always forgetting it that I somehow didn't hear him.

The next time I ran into him, I was with someone else who talked to him for a bit. I kept trying to look at his badge but it was at an odd angle I couldn't catch without being really obvious. Afterwards I asked someone else for his name but for some reason still couldn't remember it.

So this morning I ran into him and greeted him with a good morning. He pointed at me, smiled and playfully asked, "so what's my name?" and I said, "uh.... Ian?" (I do not know WHY I thought it was Ian. All I knew was that it *wasn't* Mark. Where "Ian" came from I do not know!)

He looked crestfallen, like maybe I would finally have gotten it right. "no," he said disapointedly, "it's Steve*."

I wanted to slit my throat.

Then I ran into someone else and told them about this whole embarrassing experience. She said, "I keep thinking his name is Robert! I even typed it in on something and he said, "Why do you keep calling me Robert?"

The poor guy! No one can remember his name. We are so sugared out at work from the constant barrage of sweets that we've turned into a group of lobotomized automatons incapable of remembering anything but calorie count.

I felt so bad thinking about how horribly I botched his name that I came back to my desk and jotted down on a piece of paper a note to remind myself to ask him to lunch one day to get to know him. Then I left to meet my lunch date.

When I got back I looked at my note, and it said "Mark, lunch?"

I am STILL doing it!!

ARGH!

For you, dear readers... my brain (click to enlarge):

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*altered name for anonymity