Memory Trick
© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 21 May 2005
I have a memory trick. It is a good one, and I will sell it to you for a dollar.
Oh, I am not talking about a run-of-the-mill mnemonic device, such as “Every Good Boy Does Fine” (music) or “Can Oscar See Down My Pants Pocket?” (geology). I am not even talking about one of the more sophisticated memory tricks, such as those used by Las Vegas card sharks to “count cards” while playing Blackjack.
No, I am talking about the memory trick equivalent of an Atom Bomb! I am talking about a memory trick that will stupefy your friends and acquaintances – the equivalent of those old advertisements that began:
“They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I began to play . . .”
So far, I have gone through this life selfishly keeping this memory trick to myself. But recent cash-flow embarrassments have motivated me to share my secret with a grateful world, for the low price of one thin dollar. I know what you must be thinking, “if this memory trick is so good, then why would Tom sell it to me so cheaply?”
This is where the magic of the “Rule of Large Numbers” comes in. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the world population is 6 billion people. In truth, it is 6,446,131,400, (I just checked). Now, let us say that only half of these people are regular readers of my blog. Further, let us assume that only half of these readers have the perceptiveness and integrity to recognize my Memory Trick as one of the greatest memory tricks of all time and are willing to pony up the one lousy dollar I am charging. We are still talking about over a million dollars, and “that ain’t hay!“ as J. P. Morgan used to say.
This is a GREAT memory trick, and its only drawback is that there are not frequent occasions when one can use it. I myself have used it only twice. Then again, atomic bombs have been dropped “only twice” in warfare, and you can see the impact this has had. I will now describe the two occasions on which I have used this memory trick. I will begin with the first, the one I now describe as “Little Boy*.”
The “Little Boy*” event occurred in 1973 or 1974 (I don’t have a memory trick for remembering dates). I was living in Evansville, Indiana then but remained a member of the Missouri Air National Guard. This gave me the income to make my rent payments and allowed me to escape Evansville for one weekend a month. So, one weekend a month, I would drive to St. Louis.
One particular weekend, I stopped for a visit with my Mom and Dad. Someone else was there, but I had better not reveal their identity, for reasons I shall not divulge. Anyway, Mom had been telling this other person about a new postage stamp that was scheduled to come out. She said it was in honor of a Scientist whose name began with the letter “P.” She couldn’t recall the name. She and the other person had been puzzling over this for quite a while before I arrived. The other person (O.P.) was a Scientist and had suggested many possible names, but none were the one Mom was looking for.
Immediately, I recognized this as a Golden Opportunity to use my Memory Trick. I had discovered this trick quite by accident, and fairly recently. I had been trying to think of the name of a former co-worker, whose name I was convinced began with a “B.” I described this person to another co-worker, without mentioning the “B” part. They remembered his name. It was Don Le Beau. Oh. Well, the “B” was the letter in his name that got the most emphasis – the loudest sound – so I had somehow mentally filed him under his most significant sound rather than alphabetically. Hmmm. If I did this sometimes, maybe other people did too.
Since the O. P. had not come up with the “P” Scientist’s name, I concluded that this might be another “Don Le Beau.” Perhaps the most heavily accented syllable of the Scientist’s name began with a “P’” but the name itself did not? It was worth a try, especially since I doubted that I knew as many Scientist’s names as did the O. P. So, searching my memory bank for “Scientist sounds that have a ‘P’,” almost instantly I came up with Copernicus. I am not sure how I search on “sound,” but it isn’t very difficult – just let your mind go kind of “fuzzy.”
“Copernicus?,” I asked.
“YES!,” shouted Mom. O.P. nearly fell backwards out of his kitchen chair.
The second occasion on which I used this memory trick, the “Fat Man*” event, was years later. My girlfriend and one of her girl friends had been trying to talk about a man in the French Revolution who had been stabbed to death by a woman while he was in his bathtub. Sounded to me like a good topic for a “chick flick.”
Anyway, my girlfriend had been wracking her brain trying to think of the man’s name.
“It begins with an ‘R’, “ she said.
“Marat?” I replied.
I wish I had had a camera to record the looks on their faces. I suspect it would not have surprised them now if I had taken the next opportunity to walk across the nearest body of water. It was if I had read their minds, even though they themselves could not, and despite the fact that they had given me a pretty shoddy clue. I struggled to act as if this were just an everyday thing for a guy like me, the humble possessor of the uncanny ability to read their most secret thoughts!!!
But, the truth was that I knew these girls were pretty sharp, so if the name really had begun with an “R,” then they would have thought of it. It was another perfect opportunity for me to use my memory trick, so I took it. I have no shame.
OK! I am sure you are all anxious to get out there and start looking for ways to use my Memory Trick to amaze your own friends and acquaintances. Just don’t forget to wire one dollar to the secret Swiss bank account that I will set up for this purpose. I don’t want to have all this money traced to me, would you? So far, I have been having difficulty finding a Swiss banker who can think “out of the box” enough to open an account for me without demanding some huge initial deposit, but I will keep working on this, so watch this blog for instructions on where to wire your dollar.
Until then . . . don’t forget, and use your powers for good, not evil!
*Historical note: the first Atomic Bomb was nicknamed “Little Boy” and the second one was “Fat Man.” They were of different experimental designs and looked nothing at all alike. Sort of like the Judd sisters.
Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, 1793
I have a memory trick. It is a good one, and I will sell it to you for a dollar.
Oh, I am not talking about a run-of-the-mill mnemonic device, such as “Every Good Boy Does Fine” (music) or “Can Oscar See Down My Pants Pocket?” (geology). I am not even talking about one of the more sophisticated memory tricks, such as those used by Las Vegas card sharks to “count cards” while playing Blackjack.
No, I am talking about the memory trick equivalent of an Atom Bomb! I am talking about a memory trick that will stupefy your friends and acquaintances – the equivalent of those old advertisements that began:
“They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I began to play . . .”
So far, I have gone through this life selfishly keeping this memory trick to myself. But recent cash-flow embarrassments have motivated me to share my secret with a grateful world, for the low price of one thin dollar. I know what you must be thinking, “if this memory trick is so good, then why would Tom sell it to me so cheaply?”
This is where the magic of the “Rule of Large Numbers” comes in. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the world population is 6 billion people. In truth, it is 6,446,131,400, (I just checked). Now, let us say that only half of these people are regular readers of my blog. Further, let us assume that only half of these readers have the perceptiveness and integrity to recognize my Memory Trick as one of the greatest memory tricks of all time and are willing to pony up the one lousy dollar I am charging. We are still talking about over a million dollars, and “that ain’t hay!“ as J. P. Morgan used to say.
This is a GREAT memory trick, and its only drawback is that there are not frequent occasions when one can use it. I myself have used it only twice. Then again, atomic bombs have been dropped “only twice” in warfare, and you can see the impact this has had. I will now describe the two occasions on which I have used this memory trick. I will begin with the first, the one I now describe as “Little Boy*.”
The “Little Boy*” event occurred in 1973 or 1974 (I don’t have a memory trick for remembering dates). I was living in Evansville, Indiana then but remained a member of the Missouri Air National Guard. This gave me the income to make my rent payments and allowed me to escape Evansville for one weekend a month. So, one weekend a month, I would drive to St. Louis.
One particular weekend, I stopped for a visit with my Mom and Dad. Someone else was there, but I had better not reveal their identity, for reasons I shall not divulge. Anyway, Mom had been telling this other person about a new postage stamp that was scheduled to come out. She said it was in honor of a Scientist whose name began with the letter “P.” She couldn’t recall the name. She and the other person had been puzzling over this for quite a while before I arrived. The other person (O.P.) was a Scientist and had suggested many possible names, but none were the one Mom was looking for.
Immediately, I recognized this as a Golden Opportunity to use my Memory Trick. I had discovered this trick quite by accident, and fairly recently. I had been trying to think of the name of a former co-worker, whose name I was convinced began with a “B.” I described this person to another co-worker, without mentioning the “B” part. They remembered his name. It was Don Le Beau. Oh. Well, the “B” was the letter in his name that got the most emphasis – the loudest sound – so I had somehow mentally filed him under his most significant sound rather than alphabetically. Hmmm. If I did this sometimes, maybe other people did too.
Since the O. P. had not come up with the “P” Scientist’s name, I concluded that this might be another “Don Le Beau.” Perhaps the most heavily accented syllable of the Scientist’s name began with a “P’” but the name itself did not? It was worth a try, especially since I doubted that I knew as many Scientist’s names as did the O. P. So, searching my memory bank for “Scientist sounds that have a ‘P’,” almost instantly I came up with Copernicus. I am not sure how I search on “sound,” but it isn’t very difficult – just let your mind go kind of “fuzzy.”
“Copernicus?,” I asked.
“YES!,” shouted Mom. O.P. nearly fell backwards out of his kitchen chair.
The second occasion on which I used this memory trick, the “Fat Man*” event, was years later. My girlfriend and one of her girl friends had been trying to talk about a man in the French Revolution who had been stabbed to death by a woman while he was in his bathtub. Sounded to me like a good topic for a “chick flick.”
Anyway, my girlfriend had been wracking her brain trying to think of the man’s name.
“It begins with an ‘R’, “ she said.
“Marat?” I replied.
I wish I had had a camera to record the looks on their faces. I suspect it would not have surprised them now if I had taken the next opportunity to walk across the nearest body of water. It was if I had read their minds, even though they themselves could not, and despite the fact that they had given me a pretty shoddy clue. I struggled to act as if this were just an everyday thing for a guy like me, the humble possessor of the uncanny ability to read their most secret thoughts!!!
But, the truth was that I knew these girls were pretty sharp, so if the name really had begun with an “R,” then they would have thought of it. It was another perfect opportunity for me to use my memory trick, so I took it. I have no shame.
OK! I am sure you are all anxious to get out there and start looking for ways to use my Memory Trick to amaze your own friends and acquaintances. Just don’t forget to wire one dollar to the secret Swiss bank account that I will set up for this purpose. I don’t want to have all this money traced to me, would you? So far, I have been having difficulty finding a Swiss banker who can think “out of the box” enough to open an account for me without demanding some huge initial deposit, but I will keep working on this, so watch this blog for instructions on where to wire your dollar.
Until then . . . don’t forget, and use your powers for good, not evil!
*Historical note: the first Atomic Bomb was nicknamed “Little Boy” and the second one was “Fat Man.” They were of different experimental designs and looked nothing at all alike. Sort of like the Judd sisters.
Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, 1793
posted by Tom Shawcross | 6:46 PM
2 Comments:
"They were of different experimental designs and looked nothing at all alike. Sort of like the Judd sisters." Hahaha
Tom - This will advise you of my recent use of your memory trick, or part of it. The part I used was where in describing how you search on sound you say, "...just let your mind go kind of fuzzy."
So anyway I couldn't remember this guy's last name, but I thought it began with A. Then later I thought it began with S. I kept toggling between A and S, finally leaning strongly toward S, but knowing A was in the mix in a subsidiary sense. But now I'm also getting vibes about N. Now here's the critical part: Instead of focusing on any one letter then I just sort of let my mind go kind of fuzzy vis-a-vis all 3 letters. The guy's last name came to me. It's "Satin," btw. Anyway, I thought about sending you a dollar, but two things have so far prevented me. First, you haven't posted the number of your Swiss bank acct, and second (this the more important point), I don't think I owe you the money. I DID utilize one small part of your memory trick, it's true, but a close analysis of my work against yours will show that where you focused on the narrow "first syllable/second syllable" m.o., I have been able to generalize my data toward an overall principle of memory which (no offense) I doubt any user [of it] would deem a "trick." - Regards.
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