Something that amazes me is how we forget so much of our lives. Think about everything you learned in school. I bet it didn’t take you long, did it? Because, really, how much of that stuff do we really remember? (I’m looking at you, trigonometry!)I’ve noticed that the few specific things I do remember learning almost always have some sort of trick to them, a mnemonic device, if you will. And, actually, even if you won’t.
Here are a few that I thought of off the top of my head. (I also found a bunch of examples, for those of you with plenty of time to waste today.)
- The names of the planets using this phrase: "My very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas.” (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Pluto) This was back in the day when Pluto was still a planet, of course.
- The colors of the rainbow using the name Roy G. Biv. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)
- The Great Lakes using the acronym HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior)
- The classification system from biology class (I don’t know the technical terms. Maybe Smitty could help us?) using this phrase: “King Philip Came Over From Geneva, Switzerland.” (Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species)
