Yes, when it comes to memorizing, your brain is more of the teflon varietyYou have no doubt tried using a mnemonic at some point. After all, thanks to Richard from York, we can all remember the colors of the rainbow. The exponents of this cheeky little memory aid swear by its effectiveness.
But what if you have trouble remembering the mnemonic? Another mnemonic, perhaps? You see the potential problem.
The answer for me was to create one with a strong visual image that was also a bit crazy. An insignificant, weak, and abstract mnemonic just wasn’t going to be enough; We are talking about Teflon, remember? The information needed to be forcibly driven home with a virtual hammer and chisel..
It also needed to be solidly tied to the information it was trying to store and remember. This seems very obvious, but am I the ONLY person in the world who has bits of image-based mnemonics floating around in my brain but no longer has any clue as to what information they were supposed to help me remember? For instance, I have a very vivid picture of my bathroom wall plastered with dollar bills and John Lennon sitting on the edge of the tub smoking a cigar … responses on a postcard please.
There are five types of mnemonics. I have found the one that works best for me known as acrostic. An acrostic is very similar to an acronym, but it goes one step further, as you still focus on the first letter of each word that you need to remember, but then you build a sentence from words that start with those letters.
I also found that to be effective, the mnemonic must produce a vivid and colorful image in my head. And if that image is weird, crazy, and wonderful in some way, so much the better. It takes a certain amount of enthusiasm and excitement, and often humor.
I tried some but frankly they weren’t up to the job; Too weak and tasteless, with zero hits.
After thinking about it more, searching for words and imagining, it finally occurred to me:
FOR Belching Sideboard VShomps Henry’s Pizza
Once I settled on this weird and wacky phrase, I set about creating a movie in my imagination. I embellished it, making it big and daring and ridiculous. The huge round pizza is on the sideboard and when Henry walks over, licking his lips in anticipation, a pair of hands, followed by very long, thin arms, shoot out of the side of the sideboard and grab it. Henry immediately lunges forward to retrieve it (because, as we know, he loves his food and, being an exceptionally good hunter, he possesses very sharp reflexes).
But as fast as Henry is, he’s no match for the pizza-grabbing sideboard. Quick as lightning, the top drawer snaps open, and with an impressively smooth movement, the pizza is neatly deposited into the drawer just before it snaps shut. The king savagely tugs on the drawer handle for all it’s worth, but to no avail. Before long, the unmistakable sound of pizza eating activity emanates from the drawer, reverberating loudly throughout the room.
After a lot of lip smacking and ‘hmm’ of appreciation, the noise finally stops. There is total silence for a few moments, followed at first by a loud, disgusting, satisfied burp, and then by a completely different noise; the soft, low, satisfied roar of snoring.
In anger, the king steps forward and grabs the offender’s drawer handle, which this time obediently opens. He looks out and sees that the drawer is now empty; well, empty, aside from a crumpled towel and an abandoned mound of anchovies neatly stacked in the upper right corner …
I appreciate that this story, memory aid or not, may be like those anchovies … not to your liking. It definitely worked for me, but it’s just an example and obviously you can make up your own; objective do make it big, bold and … well … memorable.
It seems like it takes a long time, but actually doing it only takes a few minutes, five at the most; five minutes to remember something forever.
So, let’s go back to the original information:
FOR Catherine of Aragon (divorced)
B Anne Boleyn (beheaded)
S Jane Seymour (died)
VS Ana de Cleves (divorced)
H Catherine Howard (beheaded)
P Catherine Parr (survived)
Remember which wives were beheaded, etc. There is the following, well-known rhyme-based mnemonic that lists the ‘outcome’ for each wife in her correct order of marriage, as stated above:
Divorced, beheaded and dead
Divorced, beheaded, survived
Of course, as in most people’s lives, it is not as clear as the rhyme suggests, as in, none of marriages ended in divorce, if not annulment.
Also, Anne of Cleves technically ‘survived‘being the one who lived longer than Henry and all the other wives.
But, hopefully, this article has succeeded in its goal of helping to solidify what may have once been a slightly nebulous piece of historical information for you; At least enough so that you can find the products the next time a questionnaire pops up!
