I used to have a memory like a steel trap. If you told me your birthday, your favorite color, or what you wore to a party three years ago, it was locked away in my brain forever. I prided myself on remembering everything. It was my quiet superpower.
Then, life threw a massive curveball.
When I was 38 years old, I suffered six strokes. Surviving that was a miracle in itself, but recovery left behind a few permanent parting gifts. The biggest casualty? My short term memory. The steel trap suddenly had a few broken bars, and things started slipping through.
Fast forward to today. I am 48 now. Let’s be honest, getting older doesn't exactly do your memory any favors either. Combine the natural rust of aging with the aftermath of six strokes, and my brain has officially decided that human names are optional data.
It can be incredibly frustrating. I’ll look right at someone I’ve met three or four times, someone I genuinely like, and my mind will just present me with a blank, blinking cursor. I know who they are, I know how we met, but their name is locked behind a door I don't have the key to.
Over the last ten years, I’ve had to adapt. Since my brain won't do the heavy lifting automatically anymore, I’ve developed a few survival tactics, tricks, and "placeholder" names to get by.
First, I try to lean heavily on association tricks when I first meet someone. If I meet a "Bob," I immediately try to anchor it to something visual, like picturing him driving a giant brown truck. If I meet a "Rachel," I might mentally repeat her name three times while looking at her shoes. It doesn't always stick, but it gives my short term memory a fighting chance to move the name into the permanent file.
But when those tricks fail, which they often do, I have to pivot to my backup vocabulary.
If you encounter me out in the wild and I call you "Bud," "Chief," "My Friend," or "Boss," there is a very high probability that your actual name has temporarily evaporated from my consciousness. I’ve become an expert at using warm, casual terms of endearment to bridge the gap. It keeps the conversation friendly and flowing, and usually, nobody is any the wiser.
Living with a changed brain after a medical crisis forces you to find humor in the gaps. I might not be the memory champion I was in my twenties, but I’m still here, still connecting with people, and still figuring it out.
So, if we run into each other and I give you a warm smile and say, "Hey there, chief!" just know it’s not because I don't care. It’s just my post stroke, 48 year old brain doing the best it can.
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