I have a terrible remember

At school, we have a class in which I lead a band.  Two guitars, a drummer, one keys player, two vocalists, and me, on bass.  A while ago, I was telling a story... Until two out of the six of them said that I told them the story already.  I made sure: "Really?  All of you have heard it?"  Everyone nodded or said yes.  "Well then... I have a terrible remember..."

I instantly got weird looks and a restatement of my last sentence.

From this little anecdote, two things are revealed about me:

1.) I get tongue tied a lot.

Technically, English isn't my first language.  It's Chinese (Cantonese, in case you were wondering about the dialect). But when I went to an English speaking school, I lost all my Chinese.  Now I'm trying to re-learn it.  

Even though I've spoken English most of my life and have no accent, I still have the cursed talent of mixing up words, or even reversing syllables and individual letters between adjacent words (I think I picked this up from my mother).  For example, instead of saying "pots and pans", I would say "pats and pons".  Or I would replace the word "memory" with "remember", hence "I have a terrible remember".  Sometimes I would (somehow) insert a syllable of a (loosely) related word from the next sentence into the one I'm currently saying.  I have no idea how my brain does this.  For example:  "The food smelled good. So I ate it" would turn into "The food smate good... *pause and weird looks from people* smate... *laughter at the terrible abomination of a word I've created*".   I didn't even say "So I ate it" yet.  I somehow extracted the word "ate" before I said it and fused it with "smelled"...

One speech problem that I don't have and my parents do is the difference between "him" and "her".  In Chinese, there is no difference in gender when referring to someone.  They just always use "they" (that's the English equivalent).  Just imagine using "they" in place of "him" or "her" all the time.  That's why my parents mix up "he" and "she" all the time.  

2.) I have a rerrible temember.

This seems to happen with peoples names, faces, stories I've told, and important items and events that I tell myself not to forget.  In the last three days I have been out at public places (mall, church, etc.) around 4-5 people said "Hi Austin" and I just awkwardly said hi back having no idea who they were. My memory for these type of things are simply terrible (or timply serrible).  What was really embarrassing was when one of my friend's mom said hi to me and then continued walking in the direction she was going.  I turned to my friend and said, "I have no idea who that lady is."  My friend looked at me with an "are you serious" face and said, "that's my mom..." 

I remember last year a new girl joined our grade and was in my math class.  We sat close to each other, and introduced ourselves (let's call her Morgan).  That was the first class of the morning.  Six hours later, musical theatre started their after school rehearsals.  My mom was one of the vocal coaches and did one on one lessons with some of the students.  The lessons took place in the band room (practically my second house).  While my mom did the lessons in the practice room, I played piano in the main room, waiting for her to finish.  Morgan walked in for her lesson and when I looked up (no joke) I didn't recognize her.  At least, not as a person I just met.  My first thoughts were, "she looks familiar... where have I seen her?"  *sidenote: I am still giving myself a mental facepalm, even while typing this.*  Since I had no idea who she was, I just treated her like any other stranger: 

"Can I help you?"

"I'm here for the vocal lessons..."

"Right down that hall, the room to your right.  You can wait until the student ahead of you is done."

It wasn't until I looked at the time schedule that I learned where I had seen her before... *sigh*