I Forget...

[stickmaker]

There's a sort of hereditary aphasia in my Mother's family. We all have generally poor memories, and are spectacularly bad at names, either of people or objects. My maternal Grandmother would substitute the word "thing" when she couldn't remember someone's name. As in "I can't find my purse. Do you think I left it at Thing's house last night?"

I think I was nine or ten years old before I realized there wasn't a large family with the last name Thing in my Mother's home town.