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Of Cats and Kids

My very eager mother... just became obsolete

Posted by: Carol Lombardi

Friday, March 14, 2008 4:49 PM

It seems that the number of planets in our solar system that need to be remembered has jumped from 9 to 11, necessitating a replacement for the classic mnemonic, "My very eager mother just served us nine pizzas."

National Geographic ran a contest for a new mnemonic, which was won by a Montana 10-year-old. She came up with, "My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants." That stands for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Eris.

The next thing you know they're going to add colors to the rainbow.

I think mnemonics will become more popular as there is so much more stuff to learn these days.

For example, where there used to be one, huge, red, easy-to-remember and locate USSR, we now have 15 separate countries, with not-so-easy-to-remember names like Kyrgyzstan.

Yugoslavia, which no one could find to begin with, is now 7 countries, with no hope of being remembered without a mnemonic. (Suggestion: "My cute silly kangaroo bounced and hopped Saturday morning" for Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Montenegro.)

In other tragic education news, the Brontosaurus became the Apatosaurus, "bling," "supersize" and "metrosexual" are in the dictionary, and second-graders are learning to make PowerPoint presentations.

Fractions and long division have remained the same, but I never understood those in the first place.