A couple of the more interesting stories I ran across this past week . . .

A 105-year-old man was being interviewed for an article on Centenarians, and the reporter asked, “To what do you attribute your long life”

“Well,” he said, “For better digestion I drink beer. In case of appetite loss, I drink white wine. In case of high blood pressure, I drink scotch. When I get a cold, I drink Schnapps.” And the reporter asked, “When do you drink water?” The old guy thinks for a moment and then said, “Gee. I don’t think I’ve ever been that sick.”

UNSOCIAL MEDIA—Caleb Burczyk, 29, of Williston, North Dakota, was arrested and charged with burglary and terrorizing for kicking in the front door of a former co-worker’s home after the man apparently failed to answer Burczyk’s Facebook friend requests, according to court documents. “Accept my friend request or I’m going to murder you,” read one message, according to the affidavit, and another message said Burczyk would “come at” Thomas if he didn’t accept. The Smoking Gun reported Burczyk pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for an April appearance in district Court.

And if you are looking for that “perfect” house this one might be just for you.

The house for sale at 3 Courthouse Drive in Guildhall, Vermont, has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, an updated kitchen and seven jail cells, complete with barred windows, toilets, and cots. United Press International reported that the property, listed for $149,000, used to serve as the Essex County jail, with the jailer’s quarters attached to the back of the house. Out of use since 1969, the cells are now covered in dust and, according to the listing, just waiting for a creative buyer to “bring . . . ideas on what this 28-foot-by-40-foot wing could be!”

I don’t believe I am the only one that the older I get the more trouble I have remembering names. If you are also in that category, you will enjoy the following written by Joe Queenan.

You meet some neighbors when your kids are small, and from that point on you bump into them often at school functions or the supermarket or soccer games where your children get obliterated by the big, scary team from upstate.

Years pass, decades. You keep crossing paths with these people. You like them. They are not exactly friends and you don’t socialize with them on a regular basis, but they are people whose company you enjoy. You keep up with them. You know their kids’ names. You know that they’ve got a son who plays keyboards in Bonnie Raitt’s band or that their daughter is a public defender in Cody, Wyo. and just had twins. You may even know that they just took a job with the Sierra Club. But for the life of you, you cannot conjure up their names.

Then one day, another acquaintance shows up, and the awkward moment for introductions arrives. Mortified, you realize that you either cannot remember the necessary name or never learned it in the first place.

This is one of those ubiquitous social problems that everyone talks about, but nobody ever fixes. When the likable chap at the PTA meeting first introduced himself in 1994, you did not realize that you would keep bumping into him for the next 27 years. So, you didn’t commit his name to memory. Also, there was a lot of noise in the room that day. And you’d just had a root canal. As the years passed, it only became more embarrassing to say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I ever caught your name.”

People resort to all sorts of gambits to deal with this problem. You might stop by the person’s house and glance at the mail lying on the doorstep. Or steal a peek at their credit card while you are both fueling up at the gas station. Or discreetly ask for help from a third party: “Is the woman who runs the farmers market named Kate or Cath? Oh, you don’t know either. Thanks.”

The internet can help: You recall hearing that the person played lacrosse for Franklin & Marshall 35 years ago, so you Google ancient yearbooks searching for old team photos. Or you remember that they attended the groundbreaking ceremony when the Henrietta Poindexter Memorial Pier opened in 2006, so you rifle through the local Historical Society archives seeking their name.

You might even pretend to be soliciting signatures to get a politician’s name on the ballot, just so you can get the person to write down his or her name. One of my friends got so desperate to find out the first name of her downstairs neighbor—who she had been talking with about rampaging raccoons for a year—that she called the landlord and asked.

I myself have had some success asking people to compare hideous driver’s license photos. Or resorting to the classic old gambit: “I’ve been taking a course at Parliamo Italiano and found out that my name in Italian is Giuseppe. How do you say your name in Italian? Oh, I see. It’s Gino in both languages, is it?”

What we really need is a national Amnesty Day where it is permissible to go out and ask people their names, without fear of embarrassment, even if you have known the person in question since the Pirates won the World Series.

One thing I have learned from bitter experience is that nametrawling ploys do not always work.

On a book tour, I was driven around for a couple of days by a guy I really got to like. At the end of the second day, he asked if I would autograph a book for him. I asked him to spell his name, explaining that I had once written “To Eileen” when it should have been “To Aileen” and another time “All My Best, Rafe” when it should have been “Ralph, you’re an ace.”

The man then spelled out his name.

“B, o, b.”

There’s just no coming back from that one.