Sparkle Thy Memory

In my school days, I often found history very dull, dry and boring. Though some happenings seemed interesting and exciting; some even bringing national pride. Yet all these stories that I learnt, failed to kindle some love in me towards this subject.

It was nice to know what our rulers and leaders did in the past. However, the challenge was to know on which day was it done. Yes, you got it right! I am talking about the ever puzzling and confusing ‘dates of yore’ one has to memorise in this particular discipline to fetch you those good, decent marks. Still, when the exam paper landed in my hands, I quietly abandoned those questions about dates, which silently rested on the paper, watching me with gloomy eyes claiming that they too deserved my attention, and I would just shun away their message. Also some years later after schooling I completely detached myself from the subject.

However, some things don’t easily depart from you. You encounter them again in your life. It seems they are more interested in you than you are in them. So here once again, I was with my daughter’s history book in my hands trying to teach her something which I really did not learn myself. And to save me from the embarrassment that I knew very little, I began hunting online to find some tips and tricks that will make me feel a little better about the bygone era of our forefathers. Finally, I came across a very promising technique, which made me highly optimistic about studying something which I had ditched many years ago. And now, I am going to share it with you.

So the technique goes like this,

A)  First take numbers from 0-10 and assign a rhyming word for each digit. Like for zero you could take the rhyming word hero.

For one take run, two-shoe, three–tree, four-door, five-hive, six-sticks, seven-heaven, eight-gate, nine-wine, ten-hen.

You need not take the same rhyming words as above; you should select words which u will remember well.

B) Now take the event and the date you want to remember

Let’s take the event: Battle of Plassey – 23/6/1757.

Using each of the digit in the above date moving from left to right we are going to make a very short story.

C)To begin our story we need to find a precursor word from the event.

The end part of the word Plassey sounds like sea. So my precursor word shall be sea.

D) So let’s begin the story with the word sea.

♦ A vast blue sea (precursor word) shimmers in the afternoon sun.

                                        Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash                    

♦ a bulky shoe(the first number 2 in the date) is floating in this sea.  

                                          Photo by Leo Griffith on Unsplash

♦ Suddenly the shoe acquires wings and starts flying at a very high speed hitting a very big tree(the number 3 in the date)

                   Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

♦ The  impact is such that the tree comes crumbling down into a huge pile of sticks(no. 6 in the date)

                                     Photo by Foad Manghouly on Unsplash

♦ Life gets infused in the sticks and they start to run(no. 1 in the date)

                                               Photo courtesy of Gratisography

♦ now joy beaming on their faces as though it is a run to heaven(no. 7).

                     Photo by Sebin Thomas on Unsplash

♦ And what an amazement they indeed reach heaven, But there is a hindrance at the door; thousands of  purple bee hives (no. 5)are guarding the door.

                                                Photo by Trollinho on Unsplash

♦ The bees are peeping from their hives smiling and chanting heaven heaven(no:7).

                                       Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

The story ends here

There are certain points to remember while framing the story

1. The story has to be made by you. It is easy to remember your imagination. You cannot visualise and recollect someone else’s story so effortlessly than the one which is created by you.

2. The story has to be continuous, that is, one character has to connect to the next. Like in the above story the sea is connected to the shoe, shoe to the tree, tree to the sticks, and so on…. Connection is important, to not break the chain.

3. Don’t use this method everywhere because certain things have to be memorized.

4. The story has to be extremely dramatic. It should be funny, sad, exciting, thrilling etc.

5. Visualizing the story is important. So the characters of your story should be very weird, unusual, funny, funky. Their size, shape, movement is important.

Like we added the words bulky shoe, purple hive, thousand of hives, sticks running, bees smiling and peeping. This helps in imagination and better memory.

6. For grown-ups the activity might look tedious, but children have great fun in making such amusing stories.

So here we come to the end of this small trick, which I hope will help you remember, when a certain event of historic significance occurred.

Also do try this method to help you recollect some important dates in your life. If nothing, at least you may remember your ‘wifey’s/ hubby’s birthday’ by making a story. Remember: the scarier the story the difficult it is to forget.

featured image: Photo by Dari lli on Unsplash