Newspaper Man, What’shisface



I’m terrible with names, I always have been. About half of the time I can recall a face, but 90% of the time I can’t put a name to it. When I’m telling a story, for the most part I have to say “What’shisname” or “What’sherface”.

My wife says it’s because I’m old and forgetful, but that’s not true because I’ve been that way forever.

I think I forget names and faces because I’m a very self-absorbed person- no sense in lying about that. The simple fact is that if something doesn’t affect me directly, I’m usually not very interested in it. Most people that I meet don’t affect me directly, therefore I’m not very interested in them.

I’ve made a vow to try and be better about remembering names, though. And the reason is, now I know how it feels have your name forgotten.

A buddy of mine sent me a text the other day and asked a favor of me. He delivers newspapers every night for a living, and wanted to take a night off. I spent years doing paper routes of my own, and he knew this, so naturally he figured I’d be a good fill-in.

I told my wife that I agreed to do his route for him Saturday night, and she started laughing. “Have you forgotten how much you hated waking up in the middle of the night?” she asked. “Have you forgotten how much I hate waking up so I can wake you up?”

I told her I remembered all of that, but it was just one night. Plus it was an extra couple hundred bucks. And more importantly, a buddy had asked a favor of me.

I went to high school with this guy, known him for years, even played ball with him. We both dropped gallons of sweat like pigs in two-a-days, busted our butts to get through it, and leaned on each other when the going got tough. Because I had done so many paper routes myself, I knew how hard it was to find someone to fill in for a night.

“No,” I told her. “My buddy has asked me for a favor, and I’m not going to let him down.”

One trick that I learned back when I did routes was to keep a tape of my route. You can have someone ride with you for four or five nights to memorize all the stops (and they will probably still forget a few), or you can make a tape of the route and someone can do it right the first night.

So my buddy picked me up the day before and we rode over his route while I made a tape of it. It was about four hours long, so we had plenty of time to talk and catch up.

We talked about old times, old coaches, old girlfriends, etc. We wondered to each other where this person is now, where that person is now, have you seen how big this person has gotten?

And so you can imagine how much it stung when three and a half hours into the route my buddy- the guy who I was doing all of this for, the guy who asked me to wake up at 1:30 in the morning, in the cold, and do his paper route for him with my own $20 a gallon gas, the guy who I talk to on the sideline of every football game that I cover- looked at me and said “Man, I keep forgetting your name.”

What the? Are you serious? I couldn’t believe it. I asked him how in the Hell he sent me a text in the first place if he didn’t know my name. What was my number saved under in his phone?

“Newspaper Man,” he said.

Newspaper Man. Wow.

Well, I guess that beats the heck out of What’shisname.



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