Ever have someone's name pop into your head??

Did you ever have someone's name just pop into your head and not know why? Or, even know who's name it was at first?

I had this happen to me tonight and it was the weirdest thing. This name, Charlie Pruitt, just popped into my head as I'm laying in bed. I was thinking about something just completely different, and all of a sudden..."Charlie Pruitt"...was at the front of my brain.

I had to sit there for a good 15 minutes trying to figure out where I even knew this name from, and even now hours later I'm still not positive I've remembered for certain who it was. If I'm correct, I know the name as someone who worked for my father over 45 years ago. My father has long since passed, and I'm sure Charlie has too because he was older than my father. He didn't even work for him that long either, maybe a couple years (if that).

I was kind of half way asleep when this happened, not really all the way asleep and dreaming, but just laying there. Boom..."Charlie Pruitt"...and nothing else. No context, no memorable event, just a name. Weird.

Now, as I sit here trying to remember this guy, I recall he as kind of an enigmatic guy. I remember my father liked him because he'd always show up for work early, like way early. And, I remember (for some reason) I always knew he'd eaten breakfast at a diner somewhere. There was something about breakfast with Charlie. But no one ever knew where Charlie ate breakfast. If you remember the Clint Eastwood movie 'Heartbreak Ridge' you may recall that Eastwood's character was always one step ahead of his Marine recruits, and no one could ever figure out how. Well, this Charlie guy was kind of like this. And, as it turned out in the movie, the reason Eastwood was able to get the jump on his men was because he ate breakfast at the same place all the time where this elderly gal got his clothes ready for him the next day. My time with Charlie was long before this movie was released, and I remember when I saw the movie it reminded me of Charlie (the breakfast thing anyway).

I did eventually figure out where Charlie ate breakfast, and it was ritualistic at the same diner every day. I knew every place there was to eat breakfast in the town we all lived in, and none of these places ever heard of Charlie. Odd. Then one day, me and another guy had to go on this long trip to rescue a boom truck which was stranded, overweight, at a weigh station about 500 miles away. This other guy mentioned he had breakfast with Charlie that day. Ah HA...a clue! It turned out this diner was in the next town over about 25 miles away. Sure enough, Charlie was there at the crack of dawn every single day. Same time, same breakfast, and same waitress. Charlie was an old guy then, but he was sweet on this gal. The mystery of where Charlie ate breakfast was forever solved.

"Charlie Pruitt"...the name just popped into my head for no reason.

Weird.

I remember Charlie had a nickname too, now that I think about it. His nickname was "Sparky". Whenever you asked him what the nickname meant he'd just wink at ya. I asked him once if he'd been an electrician somewhere along his career, and he just replied "Nope". Well, what's 'Sparky' stand for then, dammit?

Never did find out what 'Sparky' meant.

"Charlie Pruitt"

Weird.

I would have agreed with 'weird' a few months ago, but something similar started happening to me on a near-daily basis. People and memories I hadn't thought of, or never recalled before keep popping into my mind, some going back 70 years.

It's like my brain is going through it's memory banks without any prompting from me. Age induced nostalgia or boredom? A glitch in the program?

The other night I had a dream about a guy my husband knew 35 years ago. I had only met him like a half dozen times and that was 35 years ago. Does that count? It was so weird that I told my husband about it and he thought it was bizarre too.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I've had this happen to me too. Well, kinda. One day my dad visited me and his own memory was starting to go and he asked me "do you remember Tom Cunningham?" I said yeah even though I had no clue who Tom Cunningham is because I was kind of hoping Tom was one of his childhood friends and he would launch into a funny story about him and Tom (all his childhood stories were hilarious).

He didn't elaborate at all, just went to another topic and for the rest of the day I wondered who the h.ell is Tom Cunningham. Several months later the name popped in my head again and I really thought about it.

I had to think for a long time before i remembered Tom Cunningham was this mentally slow teen who lived in our neighborhood when I was really small. He liked model trains and my dad had a killer model train set. Tom would come over and play with the trains. Mystery solved. I did not remember this guy at all because he moved away when I was like 7 and we didn't see him after that.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

As a consequence of my Asperger's, I rarely remember peoples names. even if they have only just told me. It's a weird sort of mental myopia, because I can remember all sorts of weird and useless technical crap, but not the simple basic of peoples names.

originally posted by: chr0naut
I rarely remember peoples names.

I can't remember people's names .... but I can remember the names of their dogs.
I know the names of tons of dogs in the neighborhood.
But I don't remember the names of the pet parents.

a reply to: FlyersFan

Speaking of names, I have a very difficult time remembering people's names also, but once I get it burned in, I'll never forget it.

But one thing which is really weird about me is...I can remember every phone number of every person I've ever known throughout my entire life like I dialed it yesterday. Even all the numbers of my neighbors when I was just a kid. Basically, every phone number I've ever known since being old enough to use the phone. The only exception to this is some international numbers where the number pattern is different, like Australia and SE Asia (where I lived for a while back in the 90's working). I can wake up some mornings and have to think (hard) about what day it is but, by golly, I can tell you what my next door neighbor's telephone number when I was 6 was!

It's a complete waste of the 'solid state drive' in my head, but I guess I'm just jiggy like this.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

It happens to me all the time. But not just names. Songs, places, movies, video games.

My mind likes to relate phrases to songs, and a song can come to my memory all throughout the day from different phrases I hear. I didn't even know I do this until my now married kid walked in the living room a few years ago with a friend and he casually said something to me in passing and then I finished the phrase whispering a song and my kid and his friend looked at each other and started laughing. Then he told me he had told his friend that he could get me to sing a specific thing without my knowing it. And then I started laughing.

I was watching Seinfeld reruns that I have awhile ago and he was fishing his keys from his pocket to unlock his apartment door and then from out of nowhere sung, "By Mennen" if you are familiar with it its from a deodorant commercial, a little motif, that often popped, and still occasionally does, into my mind. And I rewound it and watched it again and started laughing and said, "I'm not the only one that does that!"

(@ 27 seconds)



Lately I've been taking ashwagandha and my memory is sharper than ever. Memories have been flooding in I've forgot about for a long time. My mind is sharper. Sometimes I would get up to go brew a pot of coffee for example only to forget why when I got to the kitchen, but that hasn't been happening since I've been taking the ashwagandha. And lots of old names and faces and memories have been flooding in. I tell my wife stories from when we were dating about her family and silly things, like I remember the first time they came to Denver and got off at Denver International Airport they had never seen an escalator and I remember her and her sisters trying to figure it out. Or driving her dad under the I-70 bridge and seeing the awe and fear in his eyes as he had never been under such a huge bridge or seen one in his life.

Oh, and my brother called me this past weekend and asked me if I had ever been to Lake City, Colorado. And I thought about it for about 5 seconds and then the name Mel Gauss popped into my mind and I told him I remember going with Mel back in the late 90's for a brief trip. It was the most gorgeous town in the mountains I'd ever been to (aside from Crested Butte). A few years ago I tried to remember the towns name but for the life couldn't remember it, or who I had been there with. I highly recommend this ashwagandha for people who want a boost to their memory.

a reply to: randomuser2034

Dammit! Now I'm going to have that "By Mennen" jingle bouncing around in my head for the next five days! (I didn't dare watch the video; then I'd never get that out of my noggin!).

The one which always pops up into my head is..."If you think it's butter, but it's SNOT; it's Chiffon!"

(I added the 'snot' part because that's what it always sounded like to me...and I violently disliked Chiffon, so we'd always yell this at the TV whenever the ad came on singing along as kids).

Remember kids..."You can never fool Mother Nature!"

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Aha!

You're getting names.

Next thing is a message and who its for, lol

I jest, but you understand the meaning behind it

It's not nice to fool mother nature.
LOL

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

"Kelly Clarkson!" -
Steve Carell Movie: The 40 year old virgin

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

The last decade or so, I've recalled a different sort of thing. Stories about events that were told to me by my parents.

Now, these events happened long ago, MANY years before something like the internet existed to rapidly check the facts etc.

But, in vaguely recalling the mention of these events, I've since looked them up and read more about them. One of those stories was about 'Dutch Elm Disease'. In my father's version, all of the elms in the USA died as a result of the disease.

In fact, MANY elms were wiped out; Wiki says something like 75% were gone by 1989. So his version of the story was in essence correct, but lacked some details, like there were ways of combatting the disease's spread such that some areas of North America still have intact elm populations.

Looking up these things has been a way of completing the story; sort of answering some questions I had about these events when I heard of them as a boy.

But like "Charlie Pruitt", these items sometimes just well up in my memory. Kind of like the brain is asking, "what about this -- you haven't thought about it in a long time".

Cheers

a reply to: bluesman023

Ah, that's it!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Been studying the link between people of a kind. People who have ties through relationship or often just friends who are close. Someone you are related to or someone you knew in the past might have stumbled across the name...and somehow you were able to read their thoughts at the time. I have thought about seeing someone and wound up going to a store only to see them at the store...multiple times. It is like we are subconsciously able to do this. This link has been researched extensively and sometimes with the research it works well while other times it does not. Rats taught something half way across the country from other related rats share their knowledge with their kin a thousand miles away.

This link cannot be trusted totally, because we do not know where these thoughts come from. You may be connected to someone who went nuts or became psycho. That is why Christianity might have taken a stance against this calling it the act of the devil...possession.

I did a lot of personal testing of this, asked who was giving me information....names came to me...it was about physics and energy creation from trees. When I looked up the names, one was a physicists working for CERN, the other was a person working in electromagnetics for some European big corporation as an engineer. Both last names were Finn or Swede. One was a Johnson, can't remember off hand the other one was. Looked at Ancestry, there was a link to a Johnson from the town the guy came from...fourth to fifth cousin. There was no direct link to that guy though, and Johnson is actually a religious name...John's son from the bible...a lot of people had their names changed centuries ago via the church if they were religious.

Someone you know well or are related to could have just been reading that name somewhere, and thought about if you would know who it was. I get lots of off the wall things like that happen, always have, things coming out of thin air I usually brush off but lots of times they wind up being relevant to something.

As long as you are not connected to someone kind of psycho it is not a problem. The Native Americans seem to have a decent ability to utilize this, I am sure that some others do too. The link between the subconscious and conscious mind has to be developed for this to work well, and even though I do try to increase this, knowing some people who are a little weird makes me skeptical at utilizing it.

My brother and I are strongly linked, we can have a conversation and we start a sentence and rarely finish it before the proper response is given. My wife thinks we are interupting each other, but we are strongly linked, it saves a lot of time to share info this way. It is like we know what each other knows even if we are a hundred miles away. He is a great mechanic and I can do anything in building or food science. But he does not know all the chemical names or building codes so I have to explain to him things in person to teach him how to understand me. If he used to know how to use a special diagnostic tester for working on cars, I seemed to be able to use it without reading any instructions. And vice versa

AS we are now getting old, it is harder to retain that link now. Too many aches and pains that distract us from years of working jobs where we got hurt. Pain screws that link up.

If you want to find out where this name in your mind came from, call or text someone close and ask if they have thought about that person recently.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

The hypnagogic stage holds some fascinating shows, maybe your brain was just reminiscing over the good times in the background which is most likely a very good reflection of the state of your mental health. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

It's even perfectly normal to hallucinate sounds around that spot just before sleeping/waking. Let's say it was a friendly ghost... It would still be a translation in your mind anyway wouldn't it? I'm assuming you heard this name here btw although personal experience says such experiences are sometimes a clear thought or even visionary-like in nature.

Doesn't half wake you up sometimes when things like that happen, if you ignore it you'll probably have a wonderful sleep Maybe the culprit is friendly ghosts

a reply to: rickymouse

"This link cannot be trusted totally, because we do not know where these thoughts come from. You may be connected to someone who went nuts or became psycho. That is why Christianity might have taken a stance against this calling it the act of the devil...possession."

I can't quote yet...

The psychological link is what always fascinated me. Having known a few nutters I've been close to over the years I came to realise my own experience and sensitivities peaked whenever someone I knew or cared about was having their moments.

I particularly liked you link to the trees, the spore drive engineer on the newer star trek is called Paul Stamets which I'm guessing you know is a nod to the whole interconnectedness mycelium offers. Trees do communicate via their networks...

If trees are antennas and mycelium are cables what is the signal? Damned if I know, it's an absolutely fascinating topic!

a reply to: Draculad

Seems to me that the trees could actually increase this link...acting as antennas or neurons. Electric signals in the environment might actually be screwing up the link between people too. I read one article written by a scientist in this field and it stated that many animals have this link that can reach far distances...he or she stated they did extensive testing on animals. Then the author of the article stated it appears most humans have lost this ability through evolution....but I question that assertion. I think we have been brainwashed to ignore it for multiple reasons. This link might be related to intuition...a person had screwed over someone you know or were related to before, or even the tactic was used on them. So intuition tells us not to trust these people that seem to wind up in DC often...but is it actually intuition, or is it a link to other people.

I mentioned that churches in the past, and also governments have tried to control this link. It has been studied extensively by those who want us to follow them. This link is related to a known Alpha/Beta/and other personality types, some people are better receivers, others are better at transmitting. Related to the concept of goats controlling the sheep in society too.

I am sure that there is a real lot of research done on controlling this kind of link, but of course, the ones who control us do not want to tell us we are being controlled, in fact they will try to push food chemistries or meds on us to keep us from listening to our intuition and to follow what they want us to do.

I read about research on this being done thousands of years ago, and it seemed to be really increased during Hitlers rule. Many of Hitlers scientists came to America and were brought to other countries by governments when the Germans were defeated...to keep them going on their research to benefit the leaders of those countries.

a reply to: rickymouse

There seems to be a link between signals and psychological distress, most professionals would pass this off as a sleep issue since the majority of people have a few devices in their bedroom, especially phones. Personally I'm not so sure the whole phenomenon is that localised.

It is a fact signals/frequencies can affect pretty much all our senses.

The intuition link is definitely one I've noticed, the issue there is it's almost second nature for the individual to go down the thinking path of considering that they're special in some way which as you point out wouldn't exactly be true since it's a widespread experience that doesn't appear to be unique to humans.

The fact is meds work, I'm definitely open to the idea of a grand conspiracy behind it all although I'd like to imagine most medical practitioners are just trying to help people who are visibly distressed.

The church definitely knows more than it lets on about this phenomena, it's one of the most fascinating links throughout religions and rudimentary spiritualism I can think of since it's demonstrably true, some psychologically minded medical experts can get really excited on topics like this... The way I see it we've built a world around experiences related to this topic.

From harpies on the wind to sirens on the shore, maybe even burning bushes too although the church would burn me back in the day if it caught me claiming it's all the same thing. I'm not exactly saying it is either although culturally speaking it kind of is in that convoluted way.

It's possible we're just nuts as a species too. Sorry FCD we're drifting a little off topic but then again, we're probably not... Hard to tell with stuff like this!