Page 93 - How to Develop A SUPER-POWER MEMORY
P. 93

Some Pegs for Emergencies






               The memory is always present; ready  and anxious  to help—if
               only we would ask it to do so more often.
                                                            —Roger Broille



               many  times when  I've been challenged to prove that  any-
               one can remember by using something  similar to the Peg
               system—I would  use a  method  which taught  the  skeptic
               to memorize ten miscellaneous objects  forwards and  back-
               wards,  and  in  and out  of order, in about  five minutes. What
               I did  was to put  ten  small  items, in  a  row, on a  table;  items
               like a  ring, a watch, a cigarette,  a match book, a comb,  etc.
               I then told the person that  these ten objects were to repre-
               sent the numbers from one to ten.
                 Now I  taught him to  associate the  item I  called to the
               object on  the  table which  represented  the number  called.
               In other words,  if I called "typewriter" as #7,  and the sev-
               enth  item on the table was the  ring; he would associate
               "typewriter" to  ring. Later on, when  I  asked if  he  remem-
               bered #7, he would  count to  the seventh object, the ring,
               which would remind him of the typewriter.
                 This usually convinced  the  skeptic that  he could remem-
               ber  better  than  he thought he could,  but he  always  wanted
               to know if  he'd  have  to  carry  those  ten  items  with him. Of
               course, if he memorized those ten things he would have

                                                                       97
   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98