NAMES AND NUMBERS

I stink at math, and forget names faster than I can say, “and what was your name, again”? I’ve seen memory experts angrily denouncing people who ask that question. We who have forgotten a new name almost as fast as we’ve first heard it, appear not to have heard it. I’m kinda-sorta like that, though I do remember the dogs’ names I meet in my neighborhood really well. Now because of my difficulty remembering names, I’ve developed a simple technique which has often been working for me.

It’s related, obliquely, to how I now think about numbers, and it seems like it is back alley avenue into how I find myself remembering things at all. Both are quite simple, and because of their simplicity, say worlds about how my mind works.

First names. I begin with the excuse that because I have taught school for so long, I have a whole stacks of names I’ve learned over the years, and I don’t think there’s any room up there in my head to learn any more. BUT, I then say, the way I learn a new name is to associate it with one of the students I have loved over the years. (Love here a word to mean one of whom I have fond memories).

A few years ago at a W.M.C.A. in Ithaca, N.Y. there was a large mural painted on one of its walls facing the stationary bikes that I used mornings. Without anything else to focus my attention, I realized that the silhouettes clearly resembled and called to my mind several of my former students. A mnemonic device for names jumped off that wall.. Sure this is a discovery peculiar to retired university theatre directors, but be that as it may, I saw specific former “kid-actors” of mine illustrated there. Ashley Sutter Robinson is center breaking the tape. Rob Wells III is stage left with Raven Otis running close upon his left shoulder. Brandon Mallette is stage right. I happen to remember each of these “kids-o mine” fondly and believe the visuals are remarkable.. It is impossible that any of them were ever near Ithaca, N.Y.,, but miracle of miracles, there they were. I easily could feed in others names of those who are running in the background, but that would be cheating. Those additional names would be from my remembering a long list, so very fondly.

That’s how I’ve assigned myself to remember new names, now, when I meet new people. I just met a Tim, for example. And in my memory is Tim Bohn. I’ll never forget him, and now I have a new Tim.. I think of the new guy already as a “Timmy,” because that’s how I will always think of Tim Bohn. There’s a new Katie (Liddicoat), a new Michelle (Holmes), a new David (Karsten), even a new little girl in my neighborhood named Adelaide (Adelaide in my production of Guys and Dolls was Susan MacIntyre). Each of these is a joy for me to remember, and is now lodged in one of the spaces in my head with the new person. The device itself has expanded to include characters in plays, and in the case of David, the guy who started me off in the theatre my sophomore year in college. If I have several chances to see or greet the new Davids or Adelaides, I’ll now have whole images to help me imprint the new people. I also extend this technique by using names of characters in plays, novels, and films to help me in my “name pneumonic” (Emily in Our Town serves as a marker to help me remember new Emilys, for example) Who wouldn’t want to remember characters in Thornton Wilder’s plays?

Other examples of names rattling around in my head are pairs of people like: Butch and Sundance, Beatrice and Benedict. Franny and Zooey, Jim and Huck, Cagney and Lacey, Kate and Spencer, Lauren and Bogie, Sundance and Billy. That’s just a short list…………

The second section of this warm and fuzzy mental technique is my thinking of numbers. (Maybe warm and fuzzy isn’t the correct term, but certainly I would call it a positive and goofy technique). It is a way I fight off simply “stinking” at math, or more specifically at all numbers and leaving it at that. We all know numbers are such a significant part of our “digital” lives that if I were to continue to have pure aversion for them, my struggles would be overwhelming.

Conversion tables/ multiples/ addition and division/ check your work……
I wasn’t fond of the rote learning required in the maths that I was taught or had trouble learning. Mind you this was long before “New Math” made an entrance into the schools I attended. Reacting and remembering patterns of numbers has simply never been something I could do. Geometry, and certainly trigonometry saw my exit from the world of numbers. I continue to have difficulty with P.I.N.S.

There seems to be a war off sorts in my mind between language and numbers. Perhaps this is to do with an inability to make sense of numbers.

I have these days, stopped counting days marking “since or before” events in my life, and instead have begun to think of daily numbers as “good ones”. Just as I’ve said about remembering new names, sometime I think that the stacks of them have piled up leaving no new room. But I do have a new method for thinking about them.

When I wake up, I see my digital alarm, and have come upon a way to think of them as positive. Now as a retired guy, I can wake up when I want. “Getting-up numbers” that hold a happy omen for each day is my common mind-set. I usually wake and get up in the 5’s. When I awaken in the 3’s or 4’s I consider it simply a time or number which signals going back to sleep. But once in the 5’s there are crucial minutes that mark getting up. Multiples….10/15/30/45 are all good choices. Addition is good, too: This is trickier. The clock in my bedroom is digital. So….5 gets followed in minutes (read left to right, and easily added). 5:23 is a perfect example….2 + 3 = 5 / Or….. 5 + 5 = 10…so for me 5:23, 5:05 and 5:10 are several of the “good” times to actually get up. Combining 5:04/:06/:07/:08/:09 (9,11,12,13, 14,18) would be bad times. I’d stall. When my daughter was young one of my tasks was to get her up to go to school, she’d always ask for 5 or 10 more minutes to sleep; and now that I remember this perhaps that is how my numbers which call “good” times for getting up from bed began. (She’d would often get allowed her 5, sometimes 10 extra minutes.

For me, being brought up reading more of the “New Testament” not the Old Testament (or the Torah), I have been long fascinated by significance in: 3, the trinity very important, or the story of the loaves and the fishes (5 an2), the 12 disciples, Christ’s life lasting 33 years, among those numbers I considered important. The story in the last book of John (21: 1-14) gives me another specific number that I admit I didn’t think about until later. In this chapter of John the story of the number of fish caught I’ve discovered is specifically given as 153. Now it turns out this number has been studied and received fascinating explications. Chasing them I have found, for example, that: ‘Jerome, the fourth century Catholic priest and theologian, theorized that the 153 fishes in the Bible, caught by the disciples, represented all the species of fish. He then stated its meaning is that there was enough room within the church for all “races” of man. Augustine also believed that this “fish miracle” represented all kinds of men being saved by the gospel “net.” Of course discussions of numbers become exponentially silly as in angels dancing on the pin of a needle, or can be as serious as the Kaballa’s disquisitions upon The Tree of Life, (with it’s 10 spheres, 12 pathways, and the Hebrew alphabet having 22 numbered letters). The complexity of numbers studied by the Kaballa is still quite beyond me. Lord knows there are more than 153 species of fish.

I will say when Joshua Foer discusses in his book Moonwalking with Einstein of the use of images as related to numbers I find it entirely compelling. At last, someone to help me make them make more sense as a tool for memory. Until I one day get around to trying to remember more about this, however, I’ll guess to keep the old Navy rule: K.I.S.S.(Keep It Simple Stupid), as my mantra. I have been long known for not being able to remember things, and I gently suggest to myself that it’s too late to hold any more complex expiation of their importance. I am currently of the belief that names and numbers are worthy of simple positive energy, and kindly fight off Alzheimer’s with that notion. I get a kick out of remembering names of new people and enjoy giving positive strength to the numbers I use to begin my days.