Sunday, December 21, 2008
The Company sent me to Dale Carnegie Seminars. One of the sessions was on how to remember people's names. You make a picture in your head, based on some physical characteristic of that person and tied somehow to their name.
I can't do it. I can make the picture, and when I see the person again, I remember the picture - so far so good - but I can't make that jump from the picture to the name. I always screw that up somehow, usually in an embarrassing manner.
An example: There's a very pretty village upriver. Wide tree-lined streets, big old Victorian houses set back with deep lawns and wraparound porches, a friendly looking business section. It looks like a great place to raise kids. The name is Kinderhook. For some reason I can't remember that name. So I made the mental picture - a girl and a boy (kinder, it being a good place for kids), she holding a Bo-Peep shepherd's crook (hook), and he holding a fishing pole (hook). Kinder Hook. Perfect.
So whenever I want to mention that village, I see the boy and girl with crook and pole. And I think, "Kids? Children? Shepherd? Fish? Summer vacation? Bo-Peep and Huckleberry Finn? What the heck was I thinking?"
Maybe if I changed it to a picture of Peter Pan's Captain Hook burning the village down (kindling?). But that's going to make me call it Red Hook (another local village), not Kinderhook.
There's a secret method, and I'm just not getting it.
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2 comments:
I took a class one time where the instructor started out by asking all of our names, then going back and repeating them. There were close to 50 in the class. He explained his ability to do that by pointing out a girl in the middle row.
She had beautiful, long red hair, which he pictured as being a flaming S shaped snake dancing on top of her head.
To this day, I can remember what she looked like, but all I remember about her name is that it starts with an S.
I so relate to your tale!
Hey, Silk! I hope all's OK with you.
I'm not seeing any posts from you, so I'm wondering if you're one of the many in the NE without power. When you get a chance, let us know you're OK.
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