It was the worst with names. And when he had to switch languages, it was a nightmare. He would forget even the right phrase to use to apologize and ask: Sorry, your name escapes me . . . Sorry, your name . . . Every morning he would take a blank sheet of paper and write these five words out by hand. It reminded him of punishment from back in school, when he was forced to write out words he had gotten wrong or some minor infraction like “I forgot my homework” a hundred times. From here arose his early discovery that repetition changes meaning, it removes the bones and the sense of what is
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