KEEP PLANNING time / space / about #056 Ron Arbuckle MNEMONIC DEVICES FOR REMEMBERING NAMES AT THE LOCAL SUBSTANCE ABUSE RECOVERY PROGRAM

As an introverted pastor, it feels nearly impossible to explain most things about myself to others. Part of this is because while in conversations, with even the friendliest parishioners, there is an immediate wall that comes up when they speak to me. Everyone is guarded around me. The minute the “title” applies, I am no longer a face or a name, I am a “figure”. “Pastor” holds so many connotations and implicit meanings within it. When applied, everything else people might know about you no longer applies. Not at first, before they know I’m a minister. We could be having the most normal conversation in the world, but the minute that information slips out, something changes. They become careful with their choice of words. Careful with the information they disclose. Careful so as to either not incriminate themselves (as if I’d judge them) or to guard me from some harsh uncouth realities of the world (of which, I assure you, I am well aware). So, of course, I’m guarded around others also. Even after spending years around each other, the walls stay up. It’s just easier this way, I guess. One of these guarded facts is that, although I’m interested in seeing them receive the help they need in their lives, I can never quite express that I have no interest in them socially. I’m a good listener so people assume I care though, so that helps. As a result of being socially stunted in this way, I found it difficult early on in my profession to inquire about names so that I can remember them easily. Often, a name gets mentioned once and you’re expected to remember forever, but I meet a lot of people, despite my reclusive preferences to avoid them. But names are important, which is why I have trained myself diligently to remember them. If a person’s name is one of the 147 possible names on the Atlantic Ocean tropical storms list, then it’s easy for me to remember. Names like Omar, Wanda, Alex, Tammy, Chris, Imelda, or Heath. Most of the people I meet, especially in the substance abuse recovery program, are cyclones in and of themselves. The names fit. Twenty-one names on six rotating lists and an additional twenty-one on a supplemental list in case all twenty-one on the primary list are used in a given year. But unfortunately, this leaves out any names beginning with Q, U, X, Y, and Z. It also overlaps with a number of biblical names, which are all too common as it is. Names like Peter and Hanna or Rebekah and Isaac and Leah. Those blend in as one. Naturally, I end up having to be more creative to remember. DEBBY Tonight, at our meeting, Debby has been going on and on about how her husband, overwhelmed by the seemingly endless hurdles to getting their kids back, abandoned them, presumably to New Mexico, just a few nights prior. Jerry was a nice enough guy, but he lacked a high school diploma, so work was tough to find in town. Perhaps he had decided it would be easier on the family without him, since his wife was nearly done with her requirements to be reunified with the kids. Conversely, as someone who quit sports, quit school, quit every job he ever had, perhaps it was a logical next step to quit his family when that got too difficult as well. We may never know. Jerry’s an Atlantic storm name; easy to remember. Deborah’s a biblical name; easy to forget. But something about their situation, losing their kids because of domestic violence in the home while they were both high on marijuana, which was illegal at the time of their judicial hearings, combined with her name and the fact she had a lovely singing voice on Sunday mornings, always reminded me of the 18th century Mutapa Empire. It’s ruler, Mwenemutapa Debwe Mupunzagutu, known only for his infatuation with writing songs on his mbira and smoking dagga was assassinated by his brother, Zindove. It led to the kingdom fracturing and long periods of unrest. Debwe sounds like Debby. Dagga is a type of cannabis. So, I remember. “Fuck’m!” the lady next to Debby blurted out, her jaw contorting between thoughts in a constant tic. She’d been rocking ever so slightly as she’d been listening to Debby speak, animosity building, and the frustration finally exploded out. QUINN “Now, Quinn. Please. Language.” Outbursts like these always seemed to derail the rest of the meetings, so I definitely wanted to get ahead of it spiraling further, especially when it came to Quinn, of all people, going down a vitriolic rabbit hole. Quinn had been coming to the program longer than almost anyone, so I should have been able to remember her name based on that fact alone. But besides that, her name reminded me of Qing, like the Qing Dynasty in China where the Tongwei-Gansu earthquake in 1718 killed 73,000 people on the Tibetan Plateau. Over 300 mudslides resulted and fissures opened in the ground, swallowing the cities of Naxiang and Yongning beneath more than 6.06 x 108 cubic meters of earth. Quinn had a similarity to that event in that she was devastating to every person in her life. Quinn had just given birth to her third child. The first one she would have a chance to bring home, since she had been staying clean with no positive tests for meth in almost a year. She had done so well staying sober for the first eight months. We were all certain she was going to make it, but something snapped in month nine. I still haven’t found out what happened. I only remember seeing her driving past me in her Jeep one day on the main street in town. The way she fidgeted erratically behind the wheel, her mouth inaudibly spewing who knew what remarks to no one else in particular. Something was off. Sure enough, she missed a few meetings and only reappeared after the baby was gone to another family with state custody in another city, looking for our help. A never-ending cycle of fissures and landslides marked the contours of her life. POE As I was flipping through the upcoming pages in our guidebook to see what the next discussion points would be, the door burst open into our small room where we were seated around white, plastic folding tables, books laid flat atop it next to half empty cups of coffee. Shouting gibberish into the receiver of his cellphone, and hanging up without waiting for a response, stumbled Poe. He’d clearly fallen off the wagon, evident by his precarious steps over to the coffee maker. I scooted my chair out quickly and assisted him, so he wouldn’t burn himself or make a mess. Poe should be an easy name to remember simply for its uncommonness nowadays, but the habit of mnemonics sends my brain through its usual paces every time I see him again. He’s a large guy. The way he carries himself, he has a boastfulness about him, but I think it’s all projection. It’s easy to jut your chest out and exude a commanding presence when you’re your own worst enemy. Quinn once called Poe “Mexican” to which he got visibly upset and shouted back that he’s “Armenian” and that she, “should spend less time being racist and more time not fooling around with other people’s husbands”; a reference Debby did not understand, but Jerry hid his face at. The Armenian comment always made me think about the Byzantine failure against the Gothic Armies, led by Totila, at the Battle of Faventia. It was Artabazes the Armenian who won single combat against the Gothic champion, Valaris, only to fatally wound himself on his own spear. As the only competent of the Byzantine commanders, who had all wasted a great deal of time arguing over how to handle the 12,000 Goths crossing the River Po to fight them, the attack at the rear of their forces by 300 Goths who had snuck around in advance led to total panic and defeat. Mnemonic steps: 1. Armenian, 2. Totila sounds like tortilla, and 3. Poe and Po. So, I never forget his name. MR. FREDERICKSON “Mr. Frederickson, will you mind closing us out with a word of prayer?” I asked the quiet older gentleman to my left after we had finished working through each of the talking points in the book, the whole time trying to keep Poe from falling out of his chair or calling people on his cell phone to yell at them about—well, we weren’t certain of what. Mr. Frederickson nodded out of obligation and prayed quickly to close us out. His first name was one I never caught. By the time I realized I didn’t know it, it was too late to ask. No matter, “Frederickson” brought to mind Friedrich Sertürner, which made his mnemonic exceptionally easy to remember. Friedrich invented morphine in 1804. First testing it on stray dogs, he moved on to testing it on himself and then had his infamous near overdose with three young boys, none of which were older than seventeen, to which he had to force vinegar down all four of their throats to make them vomit and extrude the solution. Friedrich, naturally, became addicted to his own creation, warning everyone about the perils that were involved. Heinrich Emanuel Merck, though, picked it up for resale in his apothecaries, making his great-great-great grandchildren exuberantly wealthy as a result of their corporate ambitions. I like to imagine Mr. Frederickson’s first name is Heinrich. That would really tie it all together. He has that stern, German-like disposition. But with no accent to speak of and having been raised in our small town where he retired, his first name was probably Tim or Gerald. Not to mention, he was probably the least greedy of any of us, always showing up first and willing to be anyone’s sponsor that needed consistency and encouragement. PRESLEY I dismissed everyone for the evening and stood by the door to bid them farewell as they filtered out, interspersing exits between brief conversations and chit chat. “Goodnight, Pastor.” “Goodnight, Mr. Frederickson.” “Goodnight, Pastor.” “Goodnight, Po.” “Goodnight, Pastor.” “Goodnight, Debby.” “Goodnight, Pastor.” “Goodnight, Quinn.” The woman who had been next to Quinn, the last to leave after several others exited before her, hesitated for a second before sharing with me quietly that she had excellent news; she’s pregnant. “That’s so wonderful, Joyce! What a blessing.” Joyce is a name on the Atlantic tropical storm names roster. Very easy for me to remember. “Thank you, Pastor,” she responded with a smile as she prepared to go. “Any names picked out, yet?” “If it’s a boy, we really like the name Presley.” “Oh, so maybe naming him after me, huh?” I joked, realizing immediately after that it might have been a weird thing to suggest, her naming her baby after me. Joyce’s brow wrinkled into a furrow rather than easing into a laugh. But it wasn’t the wrinkling of being put off by awkwardness as I originally feared. It was like she was realizing something. Like she was putting two and two together for the first time regarding a point of data that she had never had access to before. The information seemed to click finally, and she smiled again. “Goodnight… Pastor,” Joyce replied, and she left.

***_____  Ron Arbuckle lives in Oklahoma. He is the author of the novel, A Matter of Design. His writing is published or forthcoming in Expat Press, Blood+Honey, Hawkeye, GONZOID, Trash Cat Lit, Citywide Lunch, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, BULL, Plague Circus Press, Some Words, serious-lit, La Rotonde, The Militant Grammarian, A Thin Slice of Anxiety & The Gorko Gazette. 16 July 2026