YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Q. I have trouble remembering names of the 300 to 500 students who take my classes each year. I feel badly when we meet on campus — and years later — and see faces fall when I fail to call them by name. I have Considered calling everyone 'Wendy', Amy', 'Scott' or 'John', estimating that I have, in that case, at least a 10 per cent chance of success or 'hitting'. I have also considered using an enthusiastic unisex greeting such as 'Hi there, guy!' but think this would be too transparent. What should I do?
Mr Chips, Michigan State University, USA A. You are not to blame. Old Etonians note that there was only one brief moment tin their schooldays when they could put a name to every one of the 1,200 faces of boys either above or below them in age. Then a new half's intake would bring about the condition which the fashionable astrologer Catherine Tennant has dubbed disk full'. As we go through life the brain, like a penny cascade in a fairground, is forced to jettison old facts and details to make way for new ones. Yet it is naturally Painful for students to accept that they had
Dear Mary.. .
so little impact on the person who had so much impact on them. Consequently you must begin to practise the technique used by a certain potentate and multiple employ- er of my acquaintance who greets all and sundry with the words 'Hello, you', the 'you' pronounced in an affectionate manner. No one seems to mind the promiscuity of the greeting, and known and unknown faces alike light up in response to it.
Q. What is the correct form for dealing with chain letters? I have received two recently, one from an identified sender, the other from an anonymous source but post- ed in Derby, where nobody that I know lives. I returned the first letter to its sender with the comment that I did not expect to receive such things from friends and appear to have thereby ended an oldish friendship. The second has simply gone into the bin. The idea of sending nine copies to acquain- tances, however vaguely known, is unac- ceptable to me.
S.C. G.S., Sutton, Cambridgeshire A. Chain letters are morally unacceptable since they offer recipients only two choices of response. One is to bin the letter and be left with a nagging sense of unease that non-compliance will bring about the disas- ters threatened. The second is to inflict the same nuisance ninefold (sometimes more) on others. Senders must therefore be pun- ished when they can be identified. Send your own chain letter back announcing that they have been chosen to be the first link in a new chain, and that bad luck will befall them if they fail to send off a cheque for £100 by return of post 'to the person whose name and address appears at the top of this page'. Needless to say, this name and address will be your own.
Mary Killen
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