Memory

I've always thought that I've had a pretty good memory. I recall events from as far back as forty-five years ago, although my short-term memory has been taken over by too much information and a life of scattershot interests.

As I was reading the third chapter of The Bell Jar this afternoon, Plath's telling of her times in graduate school brought on a memory about memory.

I believe that it early 1978... One day, in Psychology 201 (Intro to Psychology) the instructor took us through an exercise involving long-term memory. On the blackboard he wrote:

1. Command
2. Spider
3. Girls
4. Trouble
5. Eagle

then proceeded to show us how to remember them. Basically, the idea was to take the number, rhyme it with something, then figure out a relationship between the rhyming word and the word to be remembered.

One rhymes with bun — "Get your buns in here!" is a command;
Two: shoe &mdash "spider in your shoe" is an old expression (or so I was told);
Three: tree — "girls drive you up a tree" (my contribution!);
Four: door — doors give you trouble (I guess.);
Five: hive &mdash bees live in hives... eagles have wings &ndash just like bees (another of my contributions).