I think I have mentioned this previously in a column, but it happened again recently. What do you do?

I went searching the Internet for tips. You can find everything on the Internet and believe it, too.

I found a couple of funny occurrences while searching. One of my favourites was a story from a funeral, even though that sounds morbid.

“My friend was greeting guests at a funeral,” the person wrote. “One man took her hand and she asked, ‘Remind me how I know you?’ After seeing the look on his face, she realized he was her ex-husband.”

Thank goodness I have only been married once.

Here’s another story.

“My mom not only got the neighbour’s name wrong for 30 years, but she also told the whole block the wrong name. They discovered their mistake when the neighbour died and they saw his obituary.”

My most embarrassing ongoing mistake was one that came from an email. There is no excuse for this mistake.

Every few months, a communications person would send out emails about shows that were coming to Saskatoon. The person represented some big bands, such as The Who.

The first time I replied I called the person Barbi, instead of Bari. This went on for at least a year before I noticed my mistake.

I apologized about as profusely as I could. I could only imagine the laughs each of my email responses got in Bari and Barbi’s office.

As an aside, there are some pretty cool perks to being in the media business. We always seen to get offered tickets to review concerts.

One night, back in the 1990s, I was reviewing a Garth Brooks concert and the events leading up to it. The paper had given me such an early deadline that I had to submit the review before the end of the concert.

A big chunk of the review was about meeting Brooks earlier in the day, and what a genuine person he seemed to be. He asked each reporter her or his name. With one young woman, a high school student, he called her Miss Kim.

The rest of the story was to be a review of the concert.

After a handful of songs, I had to go to a small space in an office at SaskPlace, where I could pound out a review. My wife Sandy stayed in the crowd. I could hear the concert, and the cheers.

I decided I would add the last few songs he performed to the end of the review. Sandy had written them down and came to the room where I was writing.

I have always thought writing a review should be as much or more about the crowd reaction than my opinion of it.

I wasn’t a country music fan at the time. How stupid would it have been to write a review about my indifference to country music, when 15,000 people were on their feet loving every minute of it for two hours? (Note: I have seen the light and like a lot of today’s country music.)

I remember a case of a young reporter being gung-ho about doing a review at Taste of Saskatchewan, food festival in Saskatoon. He dumped all over the ribs one vendor sold. He wanted to be cool, without thinking of the impact it would have on the person’s business. It is like, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

That is why I have never believed in restaurant reviews. One overdone steak shouldn’t be allowed to harm a business.

I also remember when a young reporter was sent to review the homes of some of Saskatoon’s well-known people. They opened their doors to guests as part of a fundraising event.

What did the young reporter do? And an editor, who looked a bit like me, fail to do?

He wrote about so-and-so’s house not having toilet paper on the roll.

The reporter and editor pretty much ended that fundraiser. Who would open their home, only to be ridiculed? Gosh, how did I get on this tangent?

In Internet stories on remembering names, there were practical tips as well.

Here’s an example of the wrong way and the right way of making introductions.

A husband and wife met a woman that she knew, but couldn’t remember her name. Her husband asked his wife if she was going to introduce him to the woman. Awkward!

Here’s how it should have worked: He could have said, “Hi, I’m Tom.

‘Sorry, what’s your name?’ And she would say, ‘Nice to meet you, Tom, I’m Amy.’” And his wife would now know it’s Amy. No embarrassment for anyone.

Let’s close this out with another little snippet that I found funny.

A man runs into a person he should know, and instead of saying, “Sorry, I don’t remember your name,” he said, “Sorry, I can’t remember how to pronounce your name.”

To which the other person said, “Bob. You pronounce it Bob.”

-Cam Hutchinson