Lefty Loosey

With pregnancy brain looming large and in-charge, I'm relying more and more on mnemonic aids to get me through the day or just to stop my brain from rusting over and sealing shut when I try to remember which side the sun rises (thanks to an old American Airline's commercial, I can put that issue to bed: "From the sun rise in the east, to the sun set in the west, We're American Airlines, doing what we do best!"). Of course, that got me thinking about other tricks and rhymes I've learned over the years. Some of my favorites include:

• My very edcuated mother, just served us nine pizza-pies = Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto (back in the good old days when Pluto was still considered a planet)
• Roy G. Biv = Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet (initials of colors of the rainbow)
• No place like yours to study history well = Norman, Plantagenets, Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, Hanover, Windsor (Royal Houses of Britain)
• "Thirty days hath September/April, June and November." (Followed sometimes by "All the rest have thirty-one except February" which is a pretty lame rhyme)
• Non-verbal aid is to use your knuckles on your hands with the hills (knuckles) being 31 days and the valleys (dips) being 30 days so that the 1st knuckle is January at 31 days ending with July at 31 days then repeating from the beginning with August at 31 days, etc.
• "I" before "E" except after "C" and when sounding like "a" as in neighbor and weigh, (and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, and you'll always be wrong no matter what you say! That's a hard rule. That's a . . . that's a rough rule.)
• Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in morning, sailor take warning.
• A pint's a pound the world around (Thanks, Alton Brown!)
• M i crooked letter, crooked letter, i, crooked letter, crooked letter, i, hump back, hump back, i. = Mississippi
• Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey = To tighten/loosen screws, nuts, bolts, etc.
• Make the letter "L" with each hand by extending your first finger and your thumb and tucking the rest away - the one that actually looks like an "L" is your left.

Do you have any you'd like to share?