Friday, October 10, 2008

Medical treatment for name forgetting

Like most people, I'm often troubled when I can't remember somebody's name that I knew from long ago. It especially irks me when others state my full name and I can't even remember their first one.

Out of kindness, I am usually forced to say "what's up man?" or, "how you doing girl?." My dad always says "kiddo," apparently that works too. Game theory posits that eventually people would catch up to the fact you only use these greetings when you don't remember their name, but luckily there is generally no repeated play in the form of multiple meetings.

Luckily, I have a modest proposal. I want to start a service that treats people for this specific diseases--forgetting people's names. I am sure that there is a literature of some sort on the subject and that it could be swindled into some sort of diagnosis. Perhaps there is even some hope for treatment in the form of behavioral therapy.

But ultimately this business would not be actually about the treatment. It would be purely so that people could say, "I am sorry, but I forget your name. I have a disease, and I'm undergoing treatment for it at [my company]." Do you guys think that this might work, or is it not as big of a deal as I'm claiming it to be?