Stayin' Alive--fun and survival with mnemonics

Recently, some talk in the newsroom about a man who'd gone into cardiac arrest in a public place made me wonder if I'd be equipped to help in such a crisis. Like many people, I've taken a CPR class, but that was years ago.

I'd like to update my training, but in the meantime, I've decided to simply remember the appropriately titled Bee Gees' song "Stayin' Alive."

The American Heart Association advocates that in the event of cardiac arrest, a bystander, even without CPR training, can perform vigorous chest compressions to the beat of the classic song from "Saturday Night Fever." Apparently, the song's punchy rhythm ("ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive") allows one to perform compressions at the proper rate — and I've heard several accounts on news shows about people who have actually saved lives this way.

And that just might make it the most useful mnemonic device in history. A mnemonic device, of course, is a memory or learning aid. Who among us didn't learn the colors of the spectrum by remembering one Roy G. Biv (red, orange,yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)?

And who hasn't reminded themselves how to set a clock during daylight savings time by remembering "spring forward, fall back"?

Students often use mnemonic devices to remember material. My daughter Spencer came up with her own weird sentence to remember the Canadian provinces, from west to east: "Big Cats And Six Mice On Quest...." I can't remember the rest of it, but from that, she remembered British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and, uh, the rest of them.

There are lots of mnemonic devices for spelling. Although I've finally gotten the spelling of "sheriff" down, the following would have helped me when I was 10 and the correct number of "r"s and "f"s was always a mystery: "Sheriff has one Rifle but Fires twice."

My Facebook friend Kristine offered: "My very excellent mother just sent us nothing" as a way to remember the planets (Mars, Venus, Earth, etc.) As she explained, the phrase used to be "My very excellent mother just sent us nine pies" but that became obsolete when Pluto was stripped of its planet status.

Currently, I'm trying to learn a mnemonic device to help me remember the Supreme Court Justices in the order of when they were appointed: Studying Scandals Keeps The Giant Bride Robots All Sober (Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor). It's not going so well.

Most of us probably don't need to remember the major fungal classes, thank goodness, but if you do, think zombies: "Zombies Are Better Dead" (zygomycetes, ascomycetes, basidiomycetes, deuteromycetes).

Need to know the fates of the wives of Henry VIII? Memorize this sweet ditty:

"Divorced, Beheaded, Died,

Divorced, Beheaded, Survived."

But really, who can remember anything with the Bee Gees stuck in your head?

Contact Katie Scarvey at kscarvey@salisburypost.com.