Should I be insulted? Yesterday, my husband of 36 years...

[3catwoman3]

...asked me how to spell my middle name -

He has my cell phone number programmed into his contacts, so he never remembers that because he just tells the phone to call me. He doesn't know my social security number. I know his - he was in the military for 20 years, and a spouse ALWAYS has to know the active duty member's SSAN because you get asked for it all the time. YOu can't even take out a library book from the base library without giving your "sponsor's" social security number.

I was, quite frankly, surprised. The name isn't obscure or hard to spell - Elliott.

And no, I don't think he is having any brain function decline.

[demigoddess]

1. don't be insulted, it is normal. military wife myself and I know what you mean

my husband can't remember what I said to him yesterday but he can remember that for years I have said hundreds of times.............And he doesn't have any mental decline either. Just male hormones. male everything.

[3catwoman3]

10. Did you despise the term...

"dependent wife" as much as I did? I had been active duty myself for 4 years (nurse corp) but didn't like it enough to want to make a career of it. Too much bullshit. It was difficult to go from having my own rank and status to being a "D slash W" (D/W).

One time, when I had a very overdue library book, instead of calling me, the library sent a letter to my husband's squadron commander to report "stolen government property."

[demigoddess]

30. didn't think about it. I grew up as a brat. Also I didn't run into it very much.

didn't live on base or use their library etc. And I had a handicapped daughter, doctors gave me enough trouble that I didn't notice any other.

One time when I was a kid, some wife wrote Pres. Johnson. Husband was supposed to be chewed out but the commander went easy on him. Why couldn't a citizen write the Pres??

[3catwoman3]

31. Perhaps, having been active duty myself, the...

...designation/status change was more noticeable to me because I had been "on the other side," so to speak, where I had my own identity in the system.

[DiverDave]

32. When I married into the Air Force

Went and got my ID card. Was the only guy there. Dude yells out"HUSBAND!" Was asked to join the officer's wives club...um, no thanks. I would have been the first ever. Working off base, coming through the gate everyday, gate guard asks me if I was a "secret squirrel" nope, I said, just a husband.

[TexasTowelie]

2. Does he still need to refer to the wedding invitations

for your maiden name?

[sl8]

3. Regarding the spelling

I was curious about the the number of Ls, so I googled "Eliot vs. Elliot". As it turns out, there was a gentleman named Eliot V. Elliot:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_V._Elliott#/search

This Elliott has strong feelings about how many Ts there should be:

Details on the Correct Spelling of Elliott/Eliot/Elliot/Eliott
https://elliottmccrory.com/elliottDetails.php

[Jim Lane]

23. The L's and T's was exactly what I thought of, too. Four possible spellings! (n/t)

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

33. There's an old poem about the spelling of "Eliot" and where they come from

The double L and single T
Descent from Minto and Wolflee,
The double T and single L
Mark the old race in Stobs that dwell.
The single L and single T
The Eliots of St Germains be,
But double T and double L,
Who they are nobody can tell.

[Freddie]

4. Don't be insulted

Since I'm the one who takes care of bills, banking, medical etc. I doubt if DH knows my SS#.
Some people are name-spelling-impaired. My daughter's name is Laurie - not an unusual name or spelling at all. My late FIL would send her a check for Xmas or birthdays and always spelled her name wrong - Lorrie, Lori, etc. She was his only granddaughter.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

34. Both my late wife and I knew each others SSANs n/t

[Kali]

5. give him a break

I can't remember my kids' names half the time

hey YOU! go burn the trash!

[mythology]

19. My stepdad once called his dog while walking out the door before stopping to clarify

he meant me. I took great pride in that given the dog was less a dog and more my stepdad's favored kid.

That said, I can see being confused given the multiple different spellings of Elliott and I'm guessing he rarely calls you by your middle name. I barely remember my stepdad's actual first name because he goes by his middle name.

[Lochloosa]

6. Did you ask me something?

[madamesilverspurs]

7. That's about how long my folks had been married

when Dad, at a neighborhood gathering, introduced Mom as "My wife, June." Her name was Jean.

Things were a bit tense in the house for a few weeks.


.

[3catwoman3]

11. I'll just bet...

...they were.

[rurallib]

8. we have a daughter named Erin

How many different ways can the female Erin be spelled.
Well, I counted 6 or 7 one time when it seemed like every girl I came across was named Erin but had a 'unique' spelling.

I can't even remember the variations, but I think 3 started with 'A' ..........

[mbusby]

9. I don't know...

...my ass from a hole in the ground and my wife still loves me.

[CanonRay]

12. My wife has never known my SSN

But I know hers. No biggie.

[yellowdogintexas]

15. I don't know my husband's SS # and I do our taxes.

I also do not know his cell #.

However, I do know the SS#s of both my sisters, and they know mine and each others.

Why is that you ask?

Because our dad got them all at the same time and they are consecutive.

[Laffy Kat]

13. OMG, we have the same middle name and it's spelled the same way!

It's an odd middle name for a woman. It was my paternal grandmother's maiden name. I changed my last name way back in the 80s when I was going through my goddess-worship stage, but I took my grandmother's maiden name as a middle name because I didn't have one.

You know, there are several ways to spell Elliott, so don't be too hard on him.

[3catwoman3]

14. It was my maternal grandmother's...

Last edited Mon Jul 16, 2018, 12:30 AM - Edit history (1)

...maiden name. I have always liked it. It is also our younger son's middle name, and he has it tattooed on one of his wrists. He likes it so much that he has said that if he has a son, he wants to name him Elliott.

[Laffy Kat]

16. It's my first son's middle name, too!

I hope to keep it a family name, but unfortunately, I'm not all that hopeful about grandchildren at this point. We'll see.

[brush]

17. A senior moment. Don't worry about it.

[ooky]

18. I don't know anybody's phone numbers anymore.

Just program them into my phone once and forget about them. Its amazing how the world has changed.

[3catwoman3]

21. I force myself to remember the #s I call most often, in the hope...

...that using my memory will keep me from losing it.

[mythology]

20. The other day I get a text from my mom saying she had just forwarded a voice mail to me

I had given the mechanic the wrong phone number, because apparently I don't have my own memorized. Fortunately I gave him my mom's.

Also I can never remember if my mom's birthday is April 20th or 21st and I've been convinced for years my stepdad's birthday is a week before it is.

[Jim Lane]

24. A birthday mnemonic I've found helpful

Idiosyncratic, of course, but it's worked for me:

Go to Wikipedia and, in the "Search Wikipedia" box near the upper right, enter the date you're trying to remember. This will bring you to an article about that date. For example, here's the April 21 article.

This gives you a plethora of events, births, deaths, and holidays. I usually pick a birthday and make a mental association. For example, if the correct date for your Mom is April 21, she has the same birthday as Queen Elizabeth II. If you forget the date, you can always look it up as long as you remember the Queen. You might go with the date the Red Baron was shot down if that strikes your fancy. On DU, people sometimes post tweets from George Takei; you could pick him if your mom was actually born on April 20.

Several years ago I told my then-girlfriend that she shared a birthday with a notorious mobster. She was ticked off. Well, her reaction helped fix the association in my mind (I can still remember which restaurant we were in when we had this conversation). She could be as ticked off as she wanted to be but I never forgot her birthday.

[Wounded Bear]

22. IDK, do you want to be insulted?

[3catwoman3]

27. Seeing as the next day (yesterday), he asked me...

...if I wanted to lose some weight, he's not earned any "smooth moves" points this past weekend.

I really don't care about the SSAN and phone #, but the middle name thing really did surprise me.

[zanana1]

35. That's the line my husband could not cross.

He once asked me if I'd gained weight. I went kind of ballistic. I also told him he couldn't tell me what to eat. I know I sound like a bitch, but I rarely had meltdowns, so my halo was only slightly tarnished.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

25. "Digital Dementia", it's a thing

We no longer memorize (or need to) name spellings, phone numbers, id numbers, etc.

It's all in the phone/computer.

Our brains are going out "not with a bang, but a whimper" (T. S. Eliot (with one "L&quot )

[SharonClark]

26. I probably would, but then, I am no longer married.

[In_The_Wind]

28. Don't make a big thing of it.

He would rather ask you instead of entering a correction later.

He trust you and has loved you for over 36 years.

Cut the man some slack.

[3catwoman3]

29. I haven't made even a little thing of it with him. I just thought it might make...

...for an interesting discussion here.

I cut him plenty of slack, on all kinds of things. Probably much more than he realizes.

[Major Nikon]

36. Sometimes I forget how to spell my own gotdam middle name

[tblue37]

37. There are different ways to spell that name:

Elliott
Elliot
Eliott


Despite being unusually good at spelling and at remembering names, I have trouble with the preferred spelling of Elliott. I often must send emails to someone with that as his last name, and I always forget whether he uses Elliott or Elliot (it's Elliot--I just checked), since I also know someone who uses Elliott.

I suspect we could find someone using Eliot, too, if we looked.

As for the other stuff--many people are bad at remembering numbers, passwords, etc., especially now, since people don't work their memories. They depend on the electronic memory in their pockets

[onlyadream]

38. Well, I misspell my own middle name so...

All my life I spelled it as "Lynn", but my birth certificate says "Lynne". I didn't know this until I was standing on line at the DMV and actually looked. I still spell it "Lynn".

[Kaleva]

39. There's a reason why I name my dogs "Dawg" and my cats "Kat".

I don't now the birthdays of my adult step-children or of my grandchildren. I don't know my parent's or sibling's birthdays either. Thank God for Facebook! As for holidays, I know what days New Years and the 4th of July fall on but not the rest although I know what months several of them are.