Sympathetic Non-recall

and Other Observations

Every now and then people come up with observations they feel a strong compulsion to share with others. Sixty Minutes' Andy Rooney made a career with these, and virtually every comedian to walk up to a live microphone has done the same. "Ya ever wonder why ..." or "Don't you hate it when..." or "Have you ever noticed..."

And it's not just public entertainers who want to share their wisdom with others. Parents, ministers, politicians and teachers (even CyberColumnists) are always giving these sage reflections. "In my day, we never would even think of ..." "When I was your age ..." and the ever popular "For what it's worth ..." The latter was even turned into a song in the '70s.

Since I fall into at least three of the aforementioned categories, I think it's more than high time for me to put some of my favorite observations onto this CyberTable.

CyberWhat?

What's the deal with calling everything related to the Net cyber? The term "cyberspace" was coined by William Gibson in his book Neuromancer, but has been adopted by the world to mean anything dealing with the Internet. There are many people who use the first part of the word attached to other words to describe various aspects of our relationship with the Net. CyberGoods for sales, CyberSex for a type of sales, CyberHistory for, well, you get the point. I personally think that it's more effective to capitalize the "C" in cyber and then the first letter in the rest of the newly coined word. We get this practice from some the software we use: PageMaker, PhotoShop, ClarisWorks (now AppleWorks), etc.

Line, What Line?

What's the deal with certain tourists in Europe? Have you ever noticed that certain cultures don't seem to know what a proper line (queue) is? When in Great Britain two summers ago I witnessed this phenomenon several times. While waiting to enter an attraction, certain groups of people push ahead to the front of the line with no apparent concern that others have been waiting longer. Maybe it's our conditioning, but Americans and British automatically form lines whenever there are several people waiting for a service. Even during sporting events where no formal lines are indicated, people make appropriate groups that allow people to go in the order of arrival. It seems the only fair thing to do. We even manage to stay a proper distance from the person being served. Much like the flight distance for birds, we have that same mind-set for others of our species. ( Flight distance refers to how close you can approach a bird before the bird gets so nervous about your presence that it has to fly away.) When met with this behavior most of us just get steamed up, but one can hope the violators will end up with enough bad karma that their next life will be as ants, and you know how they feel about lines!

Sympathetic Non-recall

What's the deal with forgetting something you knew, but because the person asking can't recall, you also forget? What?!?

Here's the situation: Somebody asks if you recall the name of a ... song ... actor... film ... food ... flower ... animal ... politician ... place ... play ... etc. The reason for the question is because the person asking has forgotten the answer. You will also probably forget, especially if you're anywhere near being middle-aged. You may have known the answer to the query as well as you know the name of your childhood pets, but in the split second of being told that the person asking forgot, you, too, will have forgotten the answer. To my knowledge there is no name for this condition. Allow me to submit a term for it: sympathetic non-recall. There, I've put it down. A major problems with describing this malady is that those who really understand the condition will probably forget the term.

Come to think of it...I...uh...forget. What was I talking about?

Hugh Peebles

September 30, 1998

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