I can recite the telephone number our family had when I was growing up but the address of the home my husband and I shared as newlyweds escapes me. Some may blame it on short term memory loss. I attribute it to the sheer volume of information a twenty-first century adult has to contend with daily. We are bombarded with choosing a username, PIN and password for just about everything we do online. Add to that a keyless entry, alarm code, locker combination and bank account. The threat of identity theft is too great for us to actually write the information down anywhere. Thank goodness all I have to remember is that the answer to my security question is my great aunt’s blood type and the bank will email me a new password that I’ll have to verify three different ways.
If you add children to the mix, the information one needs to call to mind increases exponentially. The problem is further exacerbated by facts that are important but not used often. Sadly, the intermittent stuff is lost in a web of tangled brain conduits waiting to hitch a ride to the right place.
For this reason, I have resorted to making up my own mnemonic devices. You know what they are; we learn them as kids to solidify particular bits of information in our heads. They are things like acronyms, rhymes or sing-songy phrases used to jog our memories. I suppose a few nerds out there would instantly know that the month of May has 31 days, but most of us would take two seconds to silently recite “Thirty days hath September, April, June and November…”
What are the colors of the rainbow? Just ask Roy G. Biv. The letters in his name stand for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Why did we learn that “Every Good Boy Does Fine” in choir and band? Because E, G, B, D, F represent the notes of the lines on a treble clef scale.
When we moved into our new neighborhood, my kids had to catch the school bus on the corner of our street and one that begins with the word “stone.” The problem is we have both a Stoneridge and a Stonehenge street within walking distance. Fortunately I came up with a mnemonic device that is fail proof. The bus stops in front of the corner house with three flag poles on which are flown a number of alternating flags. For some reason the flags remind me of a pirate ship. So my train of thought goes something like this: English pirates, England, stones, Stonehenge. Stonehenge is the corner where my kids catch the bus.
My husband thinks this kind of reasoning is nutty. I insist that these crazy associations work.
In order to remember the name of the cute little theater near the parking garage in Dayton’s Oregon District, I thought about parking my dodge neon in the garage near the theatre; The Neon Theater.
“You drive a Jeep,” my husband said.
“But it isn’t the Jeep theater, it’s the Neon,” I protested.
Mnemonic devices can also be used by assigning characteristics to things or people. The principle behind this is that the human mind remembers spatial, personal, humorous or meaningful information more readily than something arbitrary.
Kaylee, one of the gals that work in our favorite coffee shop, is taller than me. I imagine her CALLing down to me. I call back up and tell her my order is oKAY. Kaylee calls. The other gal is Shelby. Shelby’s mom works at the YMCA so at any given time she’ll be at the Y; Shelby. My husband picked up my coffee cup and smelled its contents after I tried to explain that one.
My girlfriend is engaged to a neat guy with a simple last name. I know it’s only four letters but which four? Since he’s also quite tall, I think of elevators and come up with the four-letter name “Otto” for the inventor of the elevator.
“Don’t you mean Otis?” asked my husband. “It says ‘Otis Elevator Company’ in just about every elevator I’ve ever been in all over the world.”
I gave him the evil eye. My word association was clever. I didn’t want to change it but I was, in fact, referring to Mr. Otis. I made a mental note to correct myself on the inventor of the elevator. I neglected, however, to come up with a new mnemonic device. A few weeks later I made mention of my girlfriend’s upcoming wedding to someone else. I thought about her fiancé’s height and related that to an elevator.
“She’s marrying a really neat guy,” I said. “His last name is Otis.”
