June 18, 2019

Two Zebras Bit My Cookie

I have a friend whose wife went to Harvard. She had the uncanny ability to bring it up on any occasion. There was no word, phrase, or conversation which wouldn’t trigger a reference to her alma mater. I used to make fun of her. First behind her back. And then, because ultimately she was a good sport about it, right to her face. As in, “What did you major in at Yale?” That kind of thing.

In the end, I don’t really think it is about triggers. If you want to talk about something, you are going to find a reason to talk about it.

I’m like that about my stories. I have written a lot of stories. About a lot of different things. So it really didn't take much to get me started. At first, I was willfully oblivious, but then I became, in no large part through an elaborately staged intervention by my friends and family, very well aware.

So I stopped cold turkey.

If someone wanted to hear about my stories, they had damn well ask me about it.

And I was doing very well until my niece Danna came home from her second year of medical school.

Now as a world-class hypochondriac and class-B germaphobe, I had no lack of stories about maladies and ailments, both real and imagined, which had assembled at the tip of my tongue just awaiting a green light that never came. That was okay. That was fine. I had discipline. I had self-restraint. It really was a damn fucking shame that a perfectly good prostate exam story went untold, but that was their loss. Danna told her stories and I was a veritable Marcel Marceau. Not even once exclaiming, “That’s not the only way you can get syphilis!” Although it wasn’t. So I was good. I was solid. Until Danna started talking about cranial nerves. Which would have been fine. Because really, I couldn’t give a shit about cranial nerves. Cranial nerves could kiss my ass. But then Rachel asked how she managed to remember all of them. And Danna said that medical students had, for years, used a memory trick. A mnemonic.

Then I said, “Some say marry money but my brother says big breasts matter more.”

Then Danna turned to me and said, “How the fuck do you know that?”

And I said, “I know things.”

And then Rena, she’s the baby, God bless her, she just didn’t know any better, said, “He probably has a story about it.”

She was right.

I did. I do.

Here it is.

Don’t blame me. You walked right into it.

I dated a woman for a couple of years while she was in medical school. She spent a lot of time studying. When she wasn't studying, she was sleeping. It didn’t really leave a lot of time for me. Her solution to the problem was that we could spend time together studying. To be clear, she was not suggesting we play doctor. I asked her if maybe she had suffered a concussion, but she slipped the verbal punch and countered with a word which landed:

Mnemonic.

I was intrigued by the ancient trick of memorizing parts of the body by using funny, and often ribald, acronyms.

“I’m in,” I said. After all, who could resist the allure of being part of a 200-year-old fraternity which remembered the consecutive order of the twelve cranial nerves by reciting a dirty ditty about a fair virgin’s vagina?

And so, I became the mnemonic guy.

I helped her study by learning as many as possible. I wasn’t studying anything else, so I got pretty good at it. It became a bit of a party trick. None of the other boyfriends could recite the list of carpal bones. But I knew that Some Lovers Try Positions That They Can’t Handle. When the relationship ended, I vowed to never use a mnemonic again. I would remember things the old-fashioned way.

This vow served me well until I kept forgetting Aubrey Plaza's name.

Aubrey Plaza, as some of you might know, is a charming and quirky actress who made her name in the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation.

I don't know Aubrey Plaza. I have never met Aubrey Plaza. Forgetting her name has never put me in a socially awkward situation. I have never had to introduce her to someone—hoping that that someone would intuitively know that I had forgotten her name and would save me by sticking out their hand and introducing themselves first in the hope that she would then respond in kind.

I have never run into Aubrey Plaza and had to say, “Hey, you,” because I had forgotten her name.

So, in the scheme of things, not remembering Aubrey Plaza’s name should not have affected my life a whit.

But somehow, I managed to forget her name every single day for a week. At first it was because my niece had started watching Parks and Recreation and we were sharing stories about the show.

“I love her,” I said.
“Yeah, me too.”
“What’s her name? I can't seem to remember her name.”
“Me neither.”
So. We looked it up.
Aubrey Plaza.

The next day, I made the mistake of trying to remember her name. I don’t know why. Why would I do such a stupid thing? My niece was not around and nobody was talking about Parks and Recreation and there was absolutely no reason why I needed to remember her name. I decided not to let it bother me.

And I didn’t.
For about 20 minutes.
And then I looked it up.

The next day it happened again.
And then the next day.

It was a little troubling. I could still remember all of the encapsulated organisms (Stealthy Killer Bugs Portray Nasty Capsules to Hide). But I couldn’t seem to remember two words.

On the fourth day, I had a small victory. I could not remember the name Aubrey Plaza, but I did remember the name of the character she played on Parks and Recreation—April Ludgate.

Am not going to lie. I was pretty damn pleased with myself.
I then decided that I was going to cheat.
The Plaza Hotel. That was going to be my prompt.
Which wasn’t really a mnemonic. So, I was still good.
But then I forgot the Aubrey part.

So I went through the letters of the alphabet. Which should have been easy as A comes first. But go ahead. Try all the names that start with A. I challenge you to ever come up with Aubrey.

And so, I gave up.

I was going to have to get through life without remembering Aubrey Plaza’s name.

So, should you bump into me and Aubrey walking together on Melrose, please have the decency to stick out your hand and introduce yourself.

I just can’t remember her name.

But feel free to ask me about the facial nerve branches. Those, I know.

Temporal
Zygomatic
Buccal
Mandibular
and Cervical

And I don’t have to use a mnemonic.

I promise.

The end.