You know the time when you have no idea what a girl’s name is but she definitely knows yours since she just said it aloud?

Or how about when you’re headed to class and you pass a former classmate walking alone in the opposite direction, and you make eye contact from far enough away that you could easily pretend you hadn’t. Now you’re unsure if you should say hello because you don’t know if he recognizes you, so you walk along anxiously until you pass him.

Meanwhile, he just went through the same train of thought and neither of you have any clue.

I’m not sure which is worse: trying to play it cool when someone doesn’t remember you, or trying not to seem like a big fat pompadour when you’re the one who doesn’t remember. They’re both unnerving.

I have a friend named John who never has to deal with this situation because he has a memory mega-vault just for remembering names. John is not a creepy guy in any respect, but be warned that even if you don’t know John, John knows you … and possibly your parents.

Part of John’s gift is that because he knows everyone’s name, everyone remembers him. It’s a valuable communication skill, whereas we normal people have to be dreadfully fake half the time.

Just imagine if you had the ability to say the right thing to the right person all your life — or even just for one day.

Communication is fickle, and often subliminally manipulative, whether we know our intentions or not. Even Punxsutawney Phil has no idea what’s happening on Groundhog Day.

Most of the time we don’t think twice about our interactions with others, but we’re certainly interested in playing our cards well.

When we mix what we want to say with what someone wants to hear, there’s a fine line. Now, I don’t mean fine as in“normal,” or “OK.” I mean fine as in “Dayyumm that is fiiiine.” You know how that sounds.

That line is desirable for our self-presentation. We like to think we’re really good at reaching it, and it starts with humoring people.

Think of it this way; suppose you’re in class during syllabus week, and somehow your surname is Ricci even though you have absolutely no Italian heritage. The professor comes to your name and proclaims, “Ree-chi, a fine name from the land of Italy.”

He’s wrong, but you don’t want to show up your new professor after his elaborate display of approval. “How’d you guess?” slips out of your mouth, and now you’re in good shape with this guy — all you have to do is keep up the act for one meager semester.

But what are you really doing?

We humor people because they don’t know that they are wrong, and it’s not worth it to us to correct them. That’s what it comes down to: we realize what we’re doing, but we play along anyway.

While humoring people is a nice way of putting our pride aside for someone else, deep down we might be doing it to look good by holding onto the idea that we’re always right and would rather not argue.

Humoring people all the time could mean you never have genuine conversations, crossing the line from being nice to being patronizing.

I hope I’ve put this up in the air for you think about. I’m not making any suggestions, and here’s why:

Our minds routinely play tricks on us because we think everyone else sees things as we do. In all those awkward situations when you’re worried about what everyone else thinks about you, do you know what they are doing? They’re thinking about themselves.

We’re not always egocentric in the way we act, but since no one else can think for us, we’re egocentric in the way we think. That’s why remembering names is so
difficult.

Communication is dangerous. Maybe people who pick on Comm majors should watch their backs.