Hi my name is Matt Williams, and you are?

Let me guess. It’s Rachel, right? Oh, Michelle. And your friend’s name is Chris. I know I have that one right. Wrong again? You don’t look like a John.

Ok, I admit it, I am terrible with remembering names and I can pretend no longer that i know who you are.

For the longest time, I have given head nods to people I know I’ve met, acted equally excited toward someone who goes out of their way to say hi to me and have even had long conversations with others I simply couldn’t remember.

The problem is, some of the time I can’t remember people’s names although I know I have heard it at least a couple times.

I don’t know what my problem is. I remember the faces, but the names just go right over my head.

I have roommates who are from two different fraternities and I’m being introduced to new people all the time. We go to the same place for parties pretty much every weekend and I see these same people at every event but simply can’t seem to correlate the proper names to the familiar faces.

One would think I could remember most of their names by now, but I’m afraid that’s not the case.

One of the fraternity guys was just over at our apartment this past weekend and after he left I asked my roommate who he was.

“You know him,” my roommate said. “We go over to their place all the time. He knows who you are.”

Well shoot. How come I can’t remember this guy’s name, but I can remember a phone number I once called in the 5th grade?

The worst occurrence of my memory lapse was last year when I used a sneaky trick to find out a girl’s name who I had been talking to for about 20 minutes.

She had been in my class all semester and there really was no excuse not to know her name because there were only about 15 people in the class.

I had a friend of mine come over to where we were standing so I could introduce him to her. My plan worked and she went ahead and introduced herself right back.

I am now friends with this person and told her how I figured out her name. Luckily, she got a good laugh out of it, but others could be offended or even insulted by my inability to remember them.

This name disease isn’t because I don’t care or because I think I’m too important to learn what people call themselves. That couldn’t be any further from the truth.

I know there are more people out there just like me because those same people can never remember my name.

During the summer, the publisher of the small newspaper I worked at referred to me on several occasions as Mike McWilliams.

My name was in the paper almost every day and she had both my first and last names wrong.

So I’m asking if me or anyone else forgets your name, please be patient with us and we will eventually get it right.

Maybe you could save me the trouble of looking like a fool and introduce yourself again or just purposely get my name wrong to prove a point.

Please forgive and I hope I won’t forget ever again.