Elizabeth wrote about phone numbers (which ones you know offhand and which you don't), and it got me thinking about numbers and more broadly about memory.
I mentioned in my comment there that I still remember the calling code I used to call my mother every day, when she went to spend a few weeks with Grandma while she had surgery. My Dad had this code through work (because long-distance calls were expensive, kids, ask your parents or grandparents), and Mom wrote it on the dry-erase board by the phone, with Grandma's phone number as well, and I can still rattle off the whole damned thing*. That's about 45 years that I could have been using those brain cells for something more useful, though it did mean I never forgot Grandma's phone number. Sadly, since my aunt got rid of that phone line a few years ago, this is now no longer useful.
*It's not much of a party trick, but probably it beats out reciting the start to the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), the To Be or Not to Be speech from Hamlet**, or the Preamble to the Constitution. Or maybe they're all equally not that impressive. Won't hurt my feelings if you think so.
**I'm actually a bit fuzzy on that, now that I think about it. We had to memorize it in school, so I did know it once.
After college, I worked in a bookstore, and we sold a lot of map books (remember those? speaking of a blast from the past). The most popular one didn't have a bar code on it to scan, and we sold enough of them that I soon memorized the 10-digit ISBN. When the sales rep stopped by to check on sales (another blast from the past), he was always surprised when I typed the number in for him without asking or looking it up. If it had had a bar code to scan, I would never have learned it!
What do you know by heart? Or wish you knew by heart? Ever memorize something for school and find it stuck? I can still do Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, but the rhyme scheme helps with that. Almost as good as setting it to music.
I know my number, and Jeff's. I still remember the phone number we had when we moved to Vermont! And, uh, the zip code from when we lived in Aurora, Illinois, when I was 6. I know my library card number by heart.
ReplyDeleteI know my parents', uncle's, and daughters' phone numbers by heart, as well as my Social Security number. Otherwise I can remember little which is why I have a password book. :)
ReplyDeleteI wish I could do Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening...and I SHOULD BE ABLE TO. A giant poster of it literally hangs beside my bed!
ReplyDeleteMy husband can do a Yeats poem. I can do In Flander's Field. And lots of Bible verses, though I'm pretty horrible with references.