"Does your husband forget your anniversaries?"
"Never. I remind him of it in June, and again in January;
and I always get two presents!"
If a man's memory is so poor that he can be led to believe that he has an anniversary every six months—then he deserves to have to buy two presents.
Seriously though, the Peg system can be applied to remembering not only important anniversaries, but also important dates in history. It is also helpful for memorizing addresses, prices or style numbers.
As far as dates are concerned, if you want to remember people's anniversaries or birthdays, just associate the people, or substitute words for their names, to the date, in this way:— Suppose Mr. Gordon's birthday is April 3rd. If you associate Mr. Gordon, or the word, "garden" to "ram," you would remember it. "Ram" represents 43, and Mr. Gordon's birthday falls in the 4th month, on the 3rd day!
Of course every date will not be able to be transposed into a basic peg word. You can do that only with those that fall within the first nine months, and for the first nine days of those months. All other dates will be a three digit num199 ber, so a different idea must be used. I could tell you to make up a word which would represent the three digit number, and I will tell you to do that in most cases. But, if done all the time, it may confuse you.
If the word in your association was "tighten" (112), how would you know whether it meant the first month, 12th day, or the nth month, 2nd day? You wouldn't, and your birthday card would be a bit late if you sent it on Novem- ber 2nd to someone whose birthday is January 12th. It would be late, or about two months too early.
So, you must have a definite distinction to avoid this. I would suggest that the easiest way to do it is to use one word for the three digits, only for the first nine months. For October, November and December, use two words, your peg word to represent the month, and another word to represent the day. If you feel that you wouldn't know which word came first, then always use a word that is not a basic peg word for your day. That way you'll know that the regular peg always represents the month.
Actually this isn't necessary if you're going to use one word to represent the month and day for the first nine months. If you do, you will know that wherever you have two words in your association, the one that denotes two digits must represent the month, and the other, the day.
If you have two words in your association, both of which denote two digits, then naturally the one over twelve would have to stand for the day. Only in the few cases where the day is either the 10th, 11th or 12th in the 10th, 11th or 12th month will you have to use the ideas suggested in the chapter on telephone numbers. You would have to use a "logical illogical" picture to know which word comes first, or, always use the basic peg word for the month, and make up a word that fits phonetically, but is not a regular peg word, for the day.
If, as in school work, it is necessary for you to remember the year as well as the month and day—simply get a word to represent the year into your association. For instance, although everybody knows the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I can use that as an example. If you associated the Declaration, or a substitute word, to "car cash," you would know that it was signed on July 4th (7-4—car) in the year 1776 (76—cash). It is almost never necessary to bother with the first two digits of the year, because you would usually know the century in which an event occurred. If not, get a word for those digits into your picture, too.
School students usually have to remember only the year of an historical event. This is a cinch, because all you need in your association, besides the event itself, is one word to represent the year. Napoleon was crowned emperor in the year 1804. If you made a ridiculous picture of Napoleon being crowned, and the crown hurting his head, or making it sore (04), you would remember it.
The Chicago fire was in 1871; just associate fire to "cot" (71). If you made a ridiculous picture of a giant ocean liner sinking because it is made of "tin," you would remember that the Titanic went down in 1912.
Sometimes it is necessary to remember the year of birth and the year of the death of important people. Just as an example, if you made an association of a stevedore dressed as a lass, fighting a bear—you would recall that Robert Louis Stevenson (stevedore) was born in 1850 (lass) and died in 1894 (bear).
Now you won't be like the little boy, who when asked how he was doing in school, complained that the teacher expected him to know about things that happened before he was born!
Talking about school work, in Geography it is often im2O2 Anniversaries, Birthdays and Other Important Dates
portant to know the products that a country exports. So, why not use the Link method to remember them. Also, if you want to remember the general outline of the map of any country or state, you can always use the idea that is usually used to remember the shape of Italy.
Italy is shaped like a boot, which makes it easy to recall. If you look at the map outline of any country, with a little imagination you can make it look like something that can be pictured. Just associate that to the name of the country, and you'll always have a general idea of its shape.
Now, if you fellows want to be able to throw away those little black books full of addresses, you can. Just remember the addresses of the young ladies by using associations. The same methods apply to this. Simply transpose all the numbers into sounds, the sounds into words, and associate the words to the person living at that address. If you made a picture in your mind of yourself flying a rope, and landing it on a carpet (landed rope)—it would help in remembering that Mr. Karpel lives at 5211 (landed) 49th Street (rope).
The same ideas, of course, apply to style numbers and prices. If you happen to work in the clothing line, and wish to remember the style numbers of, say, dresses—associate the number to an outstanding feature of the dress. If style #351 is a dress with a back panel, you might "see" that panel melting; melt—351. The dress with puffed sleeves is style #3140; associate "mattress" to the puffed sleeves, etc.
The prices of the dresses can be included in the same association. I'm giving you only one or two examples for each idea, because it is always best for you to use your own imagination. It is entirely up to you as to which method you will use for remembering dates and how you will associate style numbers and prices, etc. The ideas, however, can be applied in any business.
Prices can be memorized just as anything else that has to do with numbers. Just associate the price to the item. To avoid confusion, you might decide to always use the basic peg words for dollars, and any other word that fits phonetically, for cents. The same methods have to be used here, as for telephone numbers and dates. You can use one word to represent three or four digits because you'll usually know if an item is priced in the hundreds of dollars, or not.
If you had associated "maple" with book, you'd know that the price of the book is probably $3.95, and not
$395.00. On the other hand, if you had associated "maple" to television set, it would be $395.00, not $3.95, or I would buy a couple of dozen.
Well, there you are. After this you should never forget any dates, prices, style numbers, addresses, and so on. I must repeat that it might seem easier, at first, to write down this type of information, but after awhile you will be able to associate faster than you can write.
Most important, don't worry about cluttering your mind with all these associations. Again, I want to remind you that once you have memorized the information through associations—and you use this particular information; well, you've etched it into your mind. The associations have served their purpose and you can forget about them.