Association exercise#

I reference this exercise from the Memletic Techniques chapter. It proves the power of association. It should take less than 15 minutes.

Let’s take a list of fifteen household items. Look at the list and try to memorize all the items in the order I present them (across then down). Do this for two minutes, then cover the list and write down as many as you can remember. No peeking!

Pencil Microwave Oven Lamp

Chair Television Fork

Toothpaste Clock Pizza

Doormat Apple Tap

Dog Grandma Desk#

What score did you get? If you scored fifteen right, well done. If not, let’s try a simple way to make sure you remember all fifteen items.

I’m going to present fifteen scenarios for you to visualize. Spend twenty seconds on each, before progressing to the next. Close your eyes, and imagine what the scenario would look like. Be creative! Not only see, but think of what it would sound like, smell like, maybe even taste like. Let’s start.

Visualize a pencil that is three feet long, standing in a microwave oven. Not a normal microwave oven, but an oven that’s obviously made for microwaving pencils. It’s four feet tall, very narrow, and has buttons for “light pencil,” “medium pencil” and “dark pencil.” See yourself putting this pencil in, pushing the buttons (hear the “beep” as you push them), wait a moment, then take out your “cooked” pencil. Take a bite.

See a normal lamp stand, but instead of a light bulb there is a tiny microwave oven. The light comes from the light inside the microwave oven. It doesn’t work well. Turn the light on and off a few times, and every time you do, it beeps at you.

This lamp you were looking at just grew arms and legs, walked across the living room, and sat down in your favorite chair. You are yelling at the lamp, telling it to get off the chair. “Furniture is not allowed on the furniture!” you yell. It doesn’t get off and instead sulks and looks insulted.

You feel a tap on the shoulder, and turn around and there is the TV, also with arms and legs, yelling at you to leave the lamp alone! There is a picture of Darth Vader on the screen, and then the TV pulls out from behind it a light saber and starts swinging it around. Hear the sound like in the Star Wars movie, and smell the ozone.

You realize its time to fight, and pull from behind you a… fork that’s about the same size as a light saber. You fight for a while but realize it’s not doing you much good because the end of the fork keeps getting sliced off. It’s getting shorter and shorter. You can feel the heat of the light saber getting closer and closer.

The TV is about to slice you up when there is an almighty crash! You open your eyes and through the ceiling has fallen a huge tube of Colgate toothpaste. It’s fallen right on the TV! You prod the toothpaste tube with the end of your fork and yes, toothpaste comes out (is it regular or minty gel?).

You walk around the toothpaste tube and see a clock hanging there. But this is no ordinary clock. It’s wired up to the toothpaste tube and it looks like a… toothpaste bomb! The clock is ticking (hear it), and it’s almost twelve o’clock! You start to run for your life.

But there is a buzz at your front door. It’s the pizza man (smell that pizza). The pizza man is also a bomb-disposal expert. He dumps the pizza at the front door, rushes in and disarms the bomb.

The pizza looks so good at the front door you decide to use it as a doormat. You walk in and out of your, feeling the pizza under your feet. Mmmm it still smells good.

You are about to close the door when a big apple rolls in the front door and squashes the pizza. This is a huge apple, and it barely fits through the door. The pizza sticks to the apple, and it rolls around for a while. Every time the pizza goes underneath, it squishes. The pizza doesn’t smell so good any more.

You decide to go and clean up at the kitchen sink. As you turn the tap on something weird happens. Instead of water coming out, the tap seems to draw the apple (sitting on the floor) towards it. The tap draws the apple all the way to it and then sucks it in. The apple shrinks as it goes in, and the tap expands like a snake eating a rat. The tap is squeaking and rattling, and then “plop,” the apple is gone.

But wait. What’s that sound coming from the tap? It sounds like… like barking? Suddenly hundreds of miniature dogs come streaming out of the tap. You manage to turn the tap off and they stop, but you still have one hundred or so tiny dogs running around the sink, barking and yapping.

The dogs make such a noise they wake grandma up. She comes over to the sink, sees all the dogs, and then faints. But instead of fainting on the floor, she faints on the ceiling. You try jumping up to pull her down, but you can’t reach.

At that point your study desk comes into the kitchen. It’s floating! You jump up on top, and it floats up close to the ceiling. As grandma wakes up, she falls a small way onto the desk. It then floats back down to the ground.

This is a crazy list, so let’s call it our “Crazy List.” How do you write a crazy list? Obviously with a crazy pencil! Imagine trying to write the list with a pencil that is laughing its head off. This pencil is really loony!

Turn to the next page to start the review…

Review#

Review your associations by completing the missing words…

You would write a crazy list with a crazy __________________

If you were going to cook one of these you would put it in a _____________________, which is also the light bulb for a ____________________, which sits in your favorite ______________ so you yell at it until the ________________ taps you on the shoulder. It’s upset. It pulls out a light saber so you have no choice but to pull out your trusty __________________. It doesn’t do you much good and you are about to be sliced up but a giant ________________ tube falls through the ceiling. Unfortunately, the tube is also a bomb because it has a ____________ ticking on the other side. Luckily, the ____________ man turns up and he happens to be a bomb disposal expert, but he drops what he was delivering at the front door. It looks so good there you decide to use it as a ___________, until it is squished by a giant ________________ rolling through the front door. No problem, it’s sucked away when you turn the ____________ on at the kitchen sink, but before you can turn it off, miniature ___________ come out and into your sink. These wake up _________________. She sees these, faints and falls to the ceiling. You can get her down because you happen to have a floating ________________.

Turn to the next page to test your recall…

Check#

Now close your eyes and review this whole crazy story in your mind. As each item from the list comes into your mind, write it down and continue with the story in your mind.

How did you go? If you missed any, review the scenes that link the items on either side. While this may seem a cumbersome way to memorize a list, with some practice you can create these stories quickly. You now also have a way to memorize any list with great accuracy!