Where the Hell Was I?

by JHSEsq

Char­lie Hatton’s blog, Where the Hell Was I?, was one of the first blogs I ever read. He, in my eyes, was the big time. He had the big blogroll with really cool blogs listed on it. I wanted to be one of those cool kids. Char­lie is a humorist, stand up comic, and a pos­si­bly record-breaking receiver of rejec­tions from McSweeney’s. He’s a Boston kind of guy. He likes Guin­ness and the Red Sox. If he can have them both together, he’s just about as happy as he can be. Char­lie has a dog named Suzy and a mis­sus who barely tol­er­ates his some­times infan­tile behav­ior (he’d wear that badge proudly). Char­lie took a hia­tus for a few months, because like many of us, he just needed a break. But, he’s back, and he’s back in fine fettle—being the same big doo­fus his faith­ful read­ers grew to know and love.

Char­lie is not unlike me in hav­ing a poor mem­ory for cer­tain things of neg­li­gi­ble impor­tance. Like the musi­cal scale – Every Good Boy Does Fine – you remem­ber that, right? But, such mem­o­riza­tion got more dif­fi­cult as time went on:

“Biol­ogy class:
To be fair, I did okay in most bio classes; that was even a big part of my major in col­lege. But that’s because biol­ogy involves more think­ing about processes and path­ways than mem­o­riz­ing lots of lit­tle factlets all over the place.
At least, it does when you’re not talk­ing about amino acids.
As bad as my mem­ory is, I can vividly recall the dreary, sink­ing feel­ing in the days lead­ing up to my amino acid test. There are twenty amino acids — twenty! — and I knew I had no shot at remem­ber­ing them all with no help. So I decided to give mnemon­ics another try. Or a first try; who knows if I remem­bered ever using them before? Like a steel sieve, my mind is.
It took a cou­ple of days, but I finally came up with a mem­ory aid for the one-letter codes rep­re­sent­ing each amino acid. And I recited it over and over, mak­ing absolutely cer­tain I could pound it into by brain for the test. It went like this:

Amish Carriages Deliver Eggplants From Green Houses In Knoxville, Leav­ing Many North­ern People Quietly Regret­ting Scrap­ping Throw­back Vegetable Wagons, Yes?
It was a work of art. It prac­ti­cally sang to me as I recited it over and over to study. It was long — but no longer than it had to be. It told a story, con­sis­tent enough even to allow me to work out some of the words if I couldn’t remem­ber the whole thing. It was absolutely brilliant.
Not as bril­liant as com­ing up with a more man­age­able ditty to remem­ber the six let­ters that weren’t rep­re­sented, per­haps. Because that would have taken one hell of a lot less time. And I thought of that, after I’d devised the text above. But once you’ve begun paint­ing a mas­ter­work, you can hardly go back. So I stuck to my story, and spent days cram­ming my mnemonic for the big test.”
As an apt intro to Charlie’s blog, please take a gan­der at today’s Ris­ing Blog­ger Post of the Day, Mnemon­i­cally Moronic.

Review writ­ten by LORI HAHN.

{ 1 comment }

1 Charlie November 25, 2007 at 10:44 am

Wow, what a cool surprise!

Thanks to Judd, and a million and one thanks to Lori, for the kindest words that may have ever been said by anyone about my writing.

Yes, I’m including my mother. And my wife. And the dog. Honestly.

Thanks again — and yours is a fantastic idea for a site! I’d love to come back and poke around for new reads.

…now if I could only think of a clever way to remember the URL. I’ll work on that. Cheers!

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