Signifying nothing, right?
How many of these do you have rattling around in your head? At work, when I'm stuck in a meeting and the pretty tree outside the conference room just won't do, I run down the list:
Books of the Bible
States & Capitals
Countries of the world via their country code
All the Bible verses I can remember
Hamlet speeches
Macbeth speeches
Julius Caesar speeches
Canterbury Tales Prologue in Middle English
Declaration of Independence
Prologue to the Constitution
Gettysburg Address
Favorite poems (Updike, Dickinson, Thomas, Brooks...)
Lyrics to Metallica and Dolly Parton songs
and etc., etc., the list goes on.
I have so much useless information in my head, and I think all the time, what will I do when I lose it? When the Alzheimer's comes, or the drugs inevitably fry my brain...how will I cope with losing all that makes me, me?
I think we all have that fear, or, even worse, we fear we will lose ourselves and not even know we are gone.
What useless knowledge do you (hopefully) have embedded in your brain?
Playground hand clapping rap (from my brain. :-)
ReplyDeleteEeny meeny gypsy leeny ooh baba bolini, otcha cotcha leverace,
I love you.
Take a peach, take a plum, take a piece of bubble gum. No peach, no plum, just a piece of bubble gum.
Hey boy, what's your name? Joey. Whatcha eatin'? Hamburger. Gimme some. No, eady greedy jump out the window sayin'...
Repeat.
See, I remember doing all those too, but the specific words escape me. Obviously, the Alzheimer's is already setting in. But I don't think I ever learned this specific one.
DeleteOf course, I spent a lot of time indoors. Reading my book. LOLOL
Do you remember the specific hand claps? I never could get those down.
No I'm very uncoordinated with the hand claps. I just like saying the rap.
DeleteI'm sure I have some useless things in my head but maybe my memory is going because I can't recall one at this moment. I'll go digging in my long term memory later.
ReplyDeleteI get immediate memory loss whenever someone asks me a question and puts me on the spot. It's a guarantee. I wonder why that is?
Delete:)
Good method, Michelle, but my memory is rusted. I do word jumbles in my head. Like if somebody said,"There is no 'I' in team", I'd think: No, but there's tame, meat, mate, and oh, look at the time --mite, emit, item... Since retirement, I still use this method to maintain a conversational facade of alert silence.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how people use different things... I don't think I could do word jumbles because I couldn't keep track of which words I'd already used.
DeleteI think it was Meg in Madeleine L'Engle's books who used Math...like prime numbers and such.
You love Shakespeare and classical poets? See I knew I liked you :)
ReplyDeleteI do! One of the things I truly appreciate from college was the introduction to classical poets and my Shakespeare classes.
DeleteClassics for a reason... :)