Hatrack River Forum: Does this ever happen to anyone else?

This is topic Does this ever happen to anyone else? in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by fiazko (Member # 5812) on :

True story:

Jeff (my friend Beth's husband) calls from upstairs: "Beth, have you seen (something or other)?"

Beth has not, but I have. Me to Beth: "It's over there on the -- (complete mind blank as I point vehemently and try to find the right words) baby eat thing!"

Do random words ever just fall out of your head, or is it just me?

Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :

OMG...

I think I married your long lost twin.... [Big Grin]

Posted by Pepek (Member # 3773) on :

I don't think that has ever... packages of chewy tortoise eggs!.

*gasps*

-Jack Montague

Posted by fiazko (Member # 5812) on :

How about some examples, Kwea?

Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :

I am kinda tired...but...

She does it all the time.

Like: Pass me the....the thinh=gy. right there. No, not that thingy, the other one (completely different objects).

or:

calling her chop suey ....chop slewey

My sister once said (as a kid)" I wanna ride my sodamikal to diswaltney world!"....

you figure it out... [Big Grin]

Kwea

Posted by fiazko (Member # 5812) on :

I definitely do the "thingy" thing. I had a friend in high school that always knew exactly what I was talking about when I did that, though. Good times. Love the "sodamikal." Took me a minute.

Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :

It's all about context clues. [ROFL]

I tend to just stop talking in midsentence.

"Hey, could you..."

"Could I what?"

"I don't know, I forgot."

Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :

Fiazko, I do it ALL the time.

*Oooh, pretty-pretty!*

What were you saying?

Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :

"What?"
"I got distracted."

Posted by fiazko (Member # 5812) on :

It's not that I get distracted. It's the little machine that grabs the words from my brain and puts them in my mouth. It apparently needs some maintenance. Or it could just be that I haven't wasted enough quarters.

Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :

When I'm talking to my mom, she watches my head. If she is talking to me and wants me to remember what she is talkign about, she will actually make me sit and look at her. If my attention wanders, my head will start to turn. She will grab my head and turn it back towards her. [Smile]

Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :

Sometimes I draw a complete blank--is that what you're talking about? Like, you KNOW you know the word but you'll be damned if you can remember it and SAY it right at that moment.

So instead, wierd crap comes out of your mouth.

That magically, those close to you understand what you're saying.

Posted by fiazko (Member # 5812) on :

That's exactly it, mack. I can get my message across, but the words just aren't there. And then my friends have something new and different not to let me live down.

Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :

Friends are like that. Bastards that they are. *shakes fist*

Posted by fiazko (Member # 5812) on :

True, but at least that was a mental lapse. There are things that they make fun of me for that I do of my own free will.

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

I am reminded of the description of a character with a 3 intelligence in the Advance Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook, 2nd edition:

Character cannot speak a language, but can communicate through grunts and guestures.

Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :

This happens to me all the time. In addition to forgetting the word I want, I will also often say a completely different word without realizing it. Like tonight I told Cor I needed to add water to the tires on our electric car. (Go ahead and try to figure it out; I bet you'll be wrong. 10 points to the first person who isn't!) I generally don't realize I have said something stupid until the laughter begins. [Grumble]

Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :

Jenni and her two best friends are have their own language...I'm not kidding.

It's scarey sometimes. I'll have her post some of those tomorrow....off to bed tonight!

Kwea

Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :

Ic..air into the tires of your golf cart?

Because everyone down there drives one around, right? [Big Grin]

Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :

I do it all the time too... often it drives people crazy, but many times they can actually figure out what I'm talking about, which is amazing!!

Oh, and my friend's little sister... well, this one requires some explanation. In Hebrew, the sound a rooster makes is "Cukuriku!" (pronounced koo-koo-REE-koo)... so my friend's little sister used to mix up Hebrew and English, and would end up with "Cukurikledoo!" It was ADORABLE.

Yeah, that was kinda unrelated. Sorry.

Posted by Christy (Member # 4397) on :

*raises hand* Tom has gotten very good at charades and mind reading. He is famous for saying "I need a noun"

Also, though, I have a strange memory. If we're talking about something, it will keep bouncing around in my head even though we've moved on and I'm participating in other conversation. Then, out of the blue, I will mention something generic about the conversation without using any specifics -- don't let me forget to water it -- and Tom will just stare at me, mentally going over our conversation trying to figure out what the heck I mean. [Smile]

Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :

Christy, my wife does that too. Sometimes long after I thought the conversation was over, she'll start talking about it again leaving me to figure what in the world she's talking about.

Posted by Happy Camper (Member # 5076) on :

Oh, it happens to me constantly, not always with nouns, but usually. It probably happens a lot more to people who are very visual. They can see the object in question, but the connection to the word just won't come. It also happens with action verbs, but much less, like I said. There are just too many thingys and whatchamadoodles out there.

Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :

Them: "Are you going by car?"
Me: "No, I'm going by... you know... long line of trucks, *honk!honk!*"
Them: "Uh... train?"
Me: "Yep. Train."

I constantly forget words.

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

Yay for circumlocution!

Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :

I do that all the time. it's been most embarrassing recently, when I'll be talking to someone I've never met before, and trying to describe what I'm thinking of.

And then there was the other night, when I was just saying completely random things and I wasn't even aware I'd said them until I had. It was doubly embarrassing because I was really trying to make a good impression. [Embarrassed]

I'll try to get Mike to post to this thread, I'm sure he'll have amusing stories.

Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :

Happens all the time to me. I can be directing my words toward one person, want to refer to a close friend by name, then draw a blank. Even though that close friend is right there in on the conversation.

Similarly, I know the name of virtually every item on display in any tool, hardware, or supply store. Yet if I start to ask a clerk where a specific item is located, the name of that item can suddenly drop out of my vocabulary. Even though I thought of the wanted word immediately before starting to ask the clerk.

I think it has to do with becoming distracted when conversing directly with people. The problem doesn't comes up while writing.
Come to think of it, the pseudo-aphasia doesn't come up while conversing on the telephone. So in my case, it's a result of being distracted by the actual physical presence of another person.

[ August 31, 2004, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :

Kwea, are you referring to a NEV? Cause I do have one of those (not quite the same as a golf cart), but no, I was not talking about adding air to the tires. [Big Grin]

-o-

Christy, I do that too. Luckily, my wife and father can both instantly jump to exactly where I am in the conversation, usually with no prodding!

Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :

I also do this constantly. Very frustrating! And I think HC is right. I am a visual learner and my usual comment in such situations is, "Arghhhh! I can SEE it! But I can't think of the word!"

Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :

I've got the worst from both my father and my mother in this case.

My mother is notorious for saying stuff like "Eat your milk and drink your sandwhich" and I've caught myself reversing verbs like that more and more frequently as I've gotten older. Everyone I know I guess just learns to translate me. I learned with my mother.

I also grew up hearing my mother go to my father,"Uh Ted, finish your sentence?" I never could figure out why she got upset about it because I always understood what my Dad was talking about, even though his speech would trail off mid sentence.

Now, I get to hear Steve, going "Uh AJ, complete sentence?" wierd, weird de ja vu.

It's actually more unusual that I share that first verbal quirk with my mother, because I am my father in a lot of other ways too. Both of us are generally honest, but apparently are kleptomaniacs when it comes to pens. For a while I worked for a guy that worked with my Dad, and he burst out laughing going, "The only time my pens dissapear in my office is when you or your father come in, and I know neither of you mean to do it!" I had no idea I did it at all. But I never have any pens in my office now either. Don't know what I do with them.

In fact the only way Steve got along with my mother, the time she flew in when I had the Gall Bladder surgery, was for them to compare notes between my father and I on our neurotic quirks. Was basically the one subject they had in common, and I was on vicadin so I didn't mind the raking over the coals I got quite as much.

(Oh yeah, my other verbal quirk, that happens in writing too... I ramble longwindedly... yeah I get that from Dad too.)

AJ

[ August 31, 2004, 12:07 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]

Posted by the master (Member # 6788) on :

anyone who's been in a car with me knows that i cannot do left and right. i say them wrong, and i follow them wrong. yes, i do hold up my hands to see which hand the thumb and index finger make an "L" on.

Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :

you too celia? I've got loads of fond memories of my swim coach yelling at me when trying to correct my stroke, "Your right hand, your right hand, NO YOUR OTHER RIGHT HAND!"

AJ

Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :

Icky, you were adding water to the batteries?

AJ

Posted by the master (Member # 6788) on :

i thought you knew. i mean, you did give me directions to the airport in cardinal directions (which i actually can do). they were wrong, but they were at least in the form i could be trusted to handle.

Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :

lol, I was asleep at the time! (Actually change that to "I was dead at the time" in your best Eddie Izzard voice) Why do you think I do cardinal directions, I don't do right and left either!

AJ

[ August 31, 2004, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]

Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :

I think we were teasing you about that at Kamacon.

Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :

I'm pretty much the opposite. I'll be the one supplying the missing word.

Today's example:

Loretta (my boss): "Carolyn [my 'real name'], can you take my keys and go... go there and get... those things. You know, those thingys. That we need for... the other thing."

Me: The cups are in the Student Lounge. I'll be right back.

Loretta: That's right. Go.

Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :

The problem I have with East and West though, is that for 18 years of my life West=toward the water. Now in Chicago East=toward the water.

This is probably why I screwed up east and west when giving the airport directions that I don't actually remember giving.

AJ

Posted by the master (Member # 6788) on :

you were, tick, you were.

i do remember thinking it was odd to have water to the west in san diego, but i didn't remake my compass to compensate. [Razz]

heh, i wonder when mah jong will mess up my sense of direction.

Posted by Happy Camper (Member # 5076) on :

AJ, I do the same thing with the pens and pencils, though usually when it's other people's I catch myself in time and return them. I have no pens in my cubicle, I just put them in my pocket, then I find them at home, take them out of the pants and put them down somewhere, never to be seen again. And my dad is one of the worst for not finishing sentences, but he doesn't make it very far into them before he stops, so there isn't ANYBODY who actually knows what he was going to say.

Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :

At least you take them out of your pants... inkstains in the wash can be bad [Embarrassed]

I know from too much experience.

AJ

Posted by Happy Camper (Member # 5076) on :

hehe, actually I sent a pencil through the wash just last week. But yes, I almost always get them out. Mostly because I put them in the side pocket of my carpenter jeans, and that's where I keep my cell phone (though that went through the wash once too [Eek!]

Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :

[ROFL]

I haven't done that... yet.

Did it work afterward? (the cell phone I mean, getting water out of your favorite mechanical pencil so it doesn't rust, is highly annoying.)

[ August 31, 2004, 01:05 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]

Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :

ding ding ding ding! That's it, AJ [Smile]

I also base my senseo fo direction like that. I actually have a nearly perfect innate sense of direction. I never get lost; I always know which way I'm pointing, where is town, where is the oean, etc. However, I don't always use the right WORDS for these things. All my early life, toward the center of town always meant NORTH, and toward the ocean always meant EAST. A couple of times when I lived north of a city I would mess up by telling people to go North (say, toward Knoxville from Oak Ridge). I KNEW which way they needed to go, just not the correct word to use.

(Interestingly enough, Disney World completely messes up my usually perfect sense of direction. I swear they fold space-time there!)

Posted by Happy Camper (Member # 5076) on :

Well, the phone worked, but the battery didn't. Fortunately I had a spare, since my old roommate had an identical phone that got run over in the parking lot and was destroyed, but the battery was fine. He gave it to me when he got a new phone.

Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :

Aha! BannaOj and celia are Australian souls transmigrated into America.

Though not quite as bad, I have to think about right and left: ie right and left have little reflexive meaning to me. Yet I don't have to think about North-South-East-West; I just go in those directions.
Possibly because I was "etiquette"trained away from being ambidextrous. As a 9year-old, I read about DaVinci, then naturally started mirror-writing with my non"dominant" hand just as easily&smoothly as I wrote with my "dominant" hand.

[ August 31, 2004, 01:53 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :

Ooooooh my wife is constantly leaving pens in her pockets, that I almost always catch. Silly me for assuming that if she assembles the load of clothes to go in the washing 'thingy' that she checked the pockets first.

Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :

Interesting, Aspectre....I hesitate to mention it, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Tasmanians (now all dead [Frown]

) believed that the first white explorers to reach their island were returnees from the spirit world, because they believed the dead returned in white bodies. o_O Perhaps AJ and Celia are ex-Tasmanian?

I too have fiazko's problem; unlike some of you it strikes me at all times, sometimes even online. I also find from time to time that I am hesitating between two very different ways of saying something or things to say. I attribute this to my thinking speed being much faster than my talking speed--by the time I've gotten to the point of saying something I'm already thinking of something else.

I have no sense of direction at all--at least not of north or south. I can tell left and right apart easily, and I get around fine by orienting on the location of concrete objects. I can't remember which way is north except by inference, but the courthouse is that way. ^

Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :

I do that all the time. My favorite word to use is hoo-hoo (or, on rare occasions, ta-ta) because it makes people do a double-take.

What are you eating?
A hoo-hoo. *points to danish*

Or...

I got a flat tire.
Too bad. What happened?
I ran over a hoo-hoo in the road.

Or...

What did you get your husband for his birthday?
One of those little hoo-hoo's with an electric ta-ta.

Posted by saxon75 (Member # 4589) on :

quote:
One of those little hoo-hoo's with an electric ta-ta.

Wow. You are a heck of a wife.

Posted by JenniK (Member # 3939) on :

have you ever had that problem where you are eating breakfast and you need more of that stuff that goes on the pancakes [Confused]

...please pass the pancake sauce! And it isn't chop slewy Kwea...it's American slop chewy get it right [Taunt]

! and yes my best friends and I do seem to have our own language... do you know what a " waaa-waaa" is ? That would be a cordless drill; it goes "waaa-waaa". and does anyone have a "boat motor" to mix this stuff with? You guessed it [Wall Bash]

...it's a Bamix mixer...well the little thingy on the end that does the mixing kinda looks like those things that make the boat go...you know on the outboard motor?!?(Kwea tells me those are called props)
Kwea thinks I'm strange. It's not me it's Joy and Jammie (yes that is spelled correctly with 2 m's). They are the ones who made me say those things it's all their fault! [Big Grin]

[ August 31, 2004, 08:04 PM: Message edited by: JenniK ]

Posted by JenniK (Member # 3939) on :

saxon75...lol...

Kwea (JenniK forgot to logout... [Evil]

)

P.S. I told you my wife (JenniK) was weird!

[ August 31, 2004, 08:10 PM: Message edited by: JenniK ]

Posted by Khal Drogo (Member # 6786) on :

All the time, all the time.

Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :

Well, there was the time that I told a co-worker that my boss was on his way to the plane station... [Dont Know]

Goody

Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :

quote:
anyone who's been in a car with me knows that i cannot do left and right. i say them wrong, and i follow them wrong.

No wonder we got a bit lost. I do left and right, but not cardinals . . .

Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :

If you ever DO do a cardinal, let us know.

Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :

[Roll Eyes]

Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :

[Laugh]

Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :

quote:
If you ever DO do a cardinal, let us know.

oh the mental movies this generates... [Blushing]

I think this needs to go to the OOC thread!

Goody

Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :

Saxy,

I am aware of the impression hoo-hoo and ta-ta give, that's why I think it's so funny. I actually got this from my cousin, who made my head turn more than once. It's very catchy.

Try it. Replace a common noun with hoo-hoo tomorrow. It'll make you smile. : )

Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :

quote:

quote:One of those little hoo-hoo's with an electric ta-ta.

Wow. You are a heck of a wife.