I’m telling you all this because, in a little while, we’ll come across a very tall tree with a narrow circular stairway inside it that winds all the way to the top. Up there, we’ll find the King of the Forgettable Name Forest, who’s the most forgetful elf of them all. He holds the first piece to the key, but he’s forgotten what it’s for so he keeps it protected hoping that one day he will remember. He’s also lost his ID card, so he has no idea what his name is. If we can somehow help him remember it, and help him remember all the names of his family members (who also live in the tree with him), I have a feeling that he’ll be so pleased with us, and that he’ll give us anything we want—including that fragment of the key!

  We’ve still got a little while before we arrive there so I’m going to explain to you how to use SEE-LINK-GO! to remember any name you want so you’ll be ready when we get there.

  Everywhere I go, I always hear people say, “I’m terrible at remembering names!” Maybe you’ve said something like that before, too? The truth is, people just haven’t learned how to go about it correctly. (Also, we know the Memory Thief is hard at work making you forget things, so he’s partly to blame as well.)

  The first tip I’m going to give you for remembering names is really, really simple:

  Try a little harder.

  Seriously, just try. Most people are simply too busy, lazy, or nervous to try. Maybe they’re thinking of something else when they meet someone or maybe they didn’t hear the person’s name properly and are too embarrassed to ask for it again. But if you stop for a second and try to focus on hearing and remembering the name or just ask their name one more time, I bet you all the dollars in the world that you’ll instantly be better at it. Maybe not perfect, but it’s a start!

  Next time you go to class or hang out with a group of people you don’t know, try to remember as many names as you can just by trying to focus. Make it a game! Tell yourself, Okay, I’m going to memorize ten names (or any number of names you feel comfortable with) in this group of people. You’ll be surprised at how well you do just by making the effort!

  Why do we forget names so easily? And why do they seem so hard to remember? It’s simple. Think of it like this: Do you speak French? No, probably not. So, if I said the word chien, would you know what that meant? Would you be able to remember it? Maybe . . . but probably not for very long. The reason is because it’s a word that doesn’t mean anything to you because you don’t speak French, duh! (Unless you do, in which case this was a bad example.) Names are sort of their own language of weird, foreign words. When you meet a person, they tell you that strange word that is their name and you’re expected to remember it. But like French words, the word doesn’t mean anything to you, so you will eventually forget it. Names don’t stick well.

  I think you see where I’m going . . . If we can apply the SEE-LINK-GO! process to any name we hear, we’d be giving it a picture (that’s the SEE part), attaching it to something we already know (that’s the LINK part), and then GO!-ing with it, to really make that picture explode onto your brain pan. All of that together is going to turn any name from an incomprehensible foreign word into an easy-to-digest English word. In other words, something that makes sense to you and which is MEMORABLE!

  I can see you nodding your head, but I still see a bit of confusion. You understand SEE-LINK-GO! but how do you use it specifically for names?

  Oh, look! I can see the tall tree we’ve been searching for just ahead. There should be a guard there waiting to guide us up the winding staircase. Let’s make sure to ask him for his name so we can practice before we meet the king.

  As we walk up to the base of the tree, a cheery elf with a big, red, scraggly beard pops out of a little wooden guardhouse just beside the entrance to the staircase.

  “Hello, friends, my name is . . .” The elf digs through his pockets to find his ID card and pulls it out, reading, “Wickley. Ah yes, my name is Wickley. How can I help you?”

  “Thanks, Wickley,” I reply. “We’re here to see the king. We are memory experts and can help him remember his name!”

  “Oh wow! That would be very helpful, indeed! He lost his ID card decades ago and no one knows what his name is. Calling him by his real name would sure beat having to keep calling him ‘dude’ or ‘guy.’ He hates that!” the guard says as he begins leading us up the stairs. “Right this way!”

  All right, we’re in business! While we make this journey upward—and to get a little practice—let’s figure out how to remember this guard’s name. To do that, let me show you how SEE-LINK-GO! works for memorizing names.

  Okay, SEE the name as a mental picture. Here are a few ideas for what you can do to quickly turn it into a picture:

  Think of a word that it RHYMES with.

  Think of a word that it REMINDS you of (maybe it looks or sounds like another word you know).

  Think of a person you already know with the SAME NAME (it could be a friend, someone in your family, or even your favorite cartoon character).

  If the name is long, or you’ve thought about it and still can’t come up with a picture, break the name into smaller syllables and try again for each syllable.

  Here are a few examples, just to give you a taste:

  If you’re thinking, Nelson, these pictures have nothing to do with the name, well . . . you’re right. And that’s okay! Remember, the name is hard to remember, so if we can think of a word that’s easier for you to remember instead of the name, it’s going to make the process of SEE-LINK-GO! much easier.

  Look at these names and see if you can come up with your own pictures for them. It’s fun! (See the Appendix for my suggested images.)

  • Brian

  • Sarah

  • Ryan

  • David

  • Bridgette

  The next step is to LINK. Let’s take that name picture and attach it to something we already know. In the case of names and faces, the best thing to attach the image to is the person’s face since we’re typically looking at it when we meet them. And usually, we notice things about their face. Maybe they have a nice smile or a goofy one. Perhaps they have freckles or just a small mole on their cheek. Everyone has something! And whenever we see that person again, we will always see the same thing. So why not use it as the thing we LINK our picture to?

  Just always try to choose something on the person’s face that jumps out at you immediately; something you know will jump out at you every time you see the person. Here are some common examples of things to look out for:

  (Be very careful when doing this not to say the thing you noticed on the person’s face, out loud. Sometimes the feature you notice might be a little bit embarrassing for them, so just keep the thought inside your head. This name-remembering technique is only for helping you get better at remembering names, not for making fun of anyone or making them feel bad. Nobody is perfect and we all have little things—whether good or bad—that people might notice.)

  The last step is to GO! That means taking your image and attaching it to that person’s face and sprinkling it with some imaginative spice! Ask yourself why the image is there. What is it doing? Use your senses. Make it move. Make it gross. Is it funny? Add as many memorable details as you can! We’ve almost made it to the top of the tree and you’ve now got the idea of how memorizing names is done, so let’s try it with Wickley’s name for some extra practice before we reach the king. I’ll help you with this one.

  When I try to SEE the name Wickley, I can’t really think of anything straight away—it’s a pretty strange one. Unfortunately, I don’t have any friends or family members named Wickley either. Hmm, does it sound like anything familiar? Sure. It kind of sounds like a mix between wick and wiggly? There you have it! My image for the name Wickley, will be a wiggly candlewick—wick-ley.

  Next, let’s LINK: Choose something on Wickley’s face. How about his big red scraggly beard? That’s perfect!

  Finally, let’s GO! I’m going to imagine that wiggly candlewick wiggling all up in his beard. So much so, that it causes the candlewick to catch fire, which then makes the beard catch fire as well, bursting into a big red ball of flame (and that’s why his beard is red!). To make that image even more memorable, let’s use all of our senses. Let’s make sure to imagine the sound of a candlewick wiggling inside a scraggly beard. That makes me imagine a really scratchy sound. How about what it would feel like? Or what the burning beard hair would smell like. Is our image making us laugh out loud? Yep, it is for me! Is it gross? Check. Is there movement? Double check. Looks like we’ve got this picture GO!-ing already!

  One last extra tip for remembering names. When you’re done with the SEE-LINK-GO! process, ALWAYS use the person’s name in a sentence out loud and as soon as possible. The sooner you do this, the better. Doing this helps because it allows your brain a chance to review what just happened, and reviewing things makes things stick for much longer. Here are a few different ways you can sneakily use the person’s name out loud:

  Ask the person a question, but start or end the question with their name.

  For example: “Wickley, how much longer till we reach the top?”

  Maybe talk to a nearby person about the person’s name you just learned.

  For example, you might say to me: “Hey, Nelson, you see Wickley over there? He’s a pretty cool elf.”

  Ask the person about their name. Make some conversation about it.

  For example: “Where is the name Wickley from? Did your father choose that name?”

  Aha! Just in time! We’ve reached the top of the tree. Wickley pushes open a big wooden door and right before us appears a very regal elf with a huge nose sitting on a throne made of hundreds of branches. He looks sad and a bit bored . . . probably because he can’t remember anything and because he’s been stuck up on his throne for so long. Hopefully, we can help him out!

  “Good day, almighty king of the Forgettable Names Forest! We have come here to help you remember your name and the names of people closest to you,” I say to the king.

  “Don’t bother . . . I’m beyond help at this point,” the king shamefully replies as he turns his head downward.

  “I beg to differ, Your Majesty. Your kind guard over there, whose name is . . . uh . . . er . . .”

  Psst . . . Quickly, what was the elf guard’s name? I seem to have forgotten it!

  Think of the feature we chose on his face, then see if you can remember the picture that comes to your mind. That should help you remember the name!

  “. . . WICKLEY. He was so kind as to guide us to you, and it seems like your people could do with a good lesson in memorizing names. Maybe if we shared our secret memory tricks, you’d all be able to remember each other’s names. And your own!” I explain to the king.

  He seems unconvinced, but eventually caves in and agrees to let us teach him the techniques. I spend the next few minutes explaining SEE-LINK-GO! and then ask him for the names of his mother, father, and brother (who are seated nearby watching).

  “Let’s start with your family members’ names,” I tell him. “If I can help you remember them with these techniques, maybe it will jog your memory for your own! Let’s begin. Can you all take out your ID cards, please? Except for you, Your Majesty, I know you’ve lost yours—we’ll get to your name in just a bit!”

  Looking at the elves’ ID cards, we now have a few names to learn. Use SEE-LINK-GO! to memorize them. See if you can do it on your own!

  In case you need a little inspiration, here’s how I would have done it. Remember, this isn’t the only way to do it, this is just the way I would have:

  ELECTRA—Electric // She has long eyelashes, right? I would imagine her eyelashes being electric, shooting out electric sparks all over the place. Crazy, I know, but unforgettable.

  CORNELL—Corn-L // Makes me think of an ear of corn, but it’s bent into the shape of the letter L. Imagine, attached to his earlobes, are big yellow ears of corn, bent into Ls. Maybe he’s even wearing them like earrings! I laughed out loud for that one! HA HA!

  GROVER—Rover // Grover rhymes with rover. I think of a Mars rover (you know, those robot vehicles they send up into space to land on Mars?). When I think of the Mars rover, I think of this big metallic object slamming down on the surface of a planet and then driving around, exploring the place. Maybe instead of slamming it down on a planet, we slam it down on top of his cool surfer hairdo and have it investigate that instead! That’s so weird!

  After thinking about these names, we explain our mental pictures to the king. He closes his eyes for a second, thinking hard, then nods and suddenly cheers with joy. “I remember their names! Electra, Cornell, and Grover! It’s been so long since I knew their names. But I still can’t remember my own name . . .”

  “Not to worry, Your Majesty. Do you happen to have a mirror?” I ask. “Let’s see if you can notice your memorable feature and then remember your own name.”

  Wickley goes and fetches a large mirror and places it in front of the king. As the king takes a long look at himself, he suddenly lights up.

  “Wait a minute . . . something’s happening in my brain . . . I can feel it . . . I see my big nose, that’s clearly my most noticeable feature . . . and now I’m starting to remember a picture of a wig hanging at the tip of my nose . . . Hmmm . . . The wig was flooding with water, yes! I remember now! A flood-wig. That flood-wig hanging at the end of my nose, seeping gallons of water . . . FLOOD-WIG . . . Ludwig! My name is Ludwig! I’ll never be able to forget that now! Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  “All hail King Ludwig!” everyone shouts in unison.

  “Since we have helped you and your people, King Ludwig, would it be okay to ask something of you?” I ask.

  “But of course, anything . . .”

  “We are in search of a missing key piece. If we have the whole key, it will help us get to the Memory Thief—he’s the one making us so forgetful these days. Last we heard, you had one of these pieces. I believe it is a treasure that you keep very safe.”

  Rubbing his chin with his hand, King Ludwig thinks to himself for a moment and gets up from his throne to walk over to a nearby wooden chest. He opens it, revealing a shiny fragment of metal with a pattern etched all over the surface.

  A MISSING KEY PIECE!

  “We elves are forever indebted to you,” the king says, handing it to us. “We would be happy for you to take this treasure. I hope it helps you on your endeavor!”

  We thank the king and his family (and Wickley, too) and tell him that we must be on our way. We say goodbye and wind our way back down to the forest floor.

  Where to now? you must be thinking.

  To be completely honest, I’m not sure. I only knew where the first key piece was. I was hoping we’d learn some information along the way about the second portion. But nope . . . nothing.

  “Guys! Hold up!”

  We turn to see Wickley, huffing and puffing.

  “King Ludwig had something more to tell you. He’s just getting the hang of this memory thing, so it only came to him after you had already left. He said something about the second piece of the key . . . that if you want to find it, you’ll have to head to the end of the forest. There, you’ll discover a vast and dangerous desert. If you travel far enough, and long enough, just until you think you can’t go any farther, when it’s too hot and you’re too tired to go on, you’ll reach the Great Word Pyramids. King Ludwig said they hold another piece of the key.”

  We look at each other and fist-bump.

  “Thank you, Wickley!” we shout to him as we run off in the direction of the desert.

  It seems that from here on out, our journey is only going to get tougher. You did great back there, remembering those names. I’m proud of you. You’ve got a real knack for this memory stuff. But I’ve still got so much to teach you and there are some new skills you’ll need to have before we get to the pyramids. Shall we proceed?

  And with that, we head down the forest path into the distance and toward the looming dangers of the Great Word Pyramids!

  Here are a few more pictures of people you can practice memorizing names with. Once you think you have them memorized, cover the names and test yourself! (See the Appendix for my suggested images.)

  Three long, hot, and sweaty days.

  That’s how long it’s been since we left the forest and entered the desert. It seems to be never-ending, with not even a single pyramid in sight. Only rolling sand dune after sand dune, with the scorching sun overhead, melting us slowly. We climb up one dune only to see dozens more in front of us in the distance.

  Could King Ludwig have been mistaken? Or could he have forgotten the correct directions and given us the wrong ones? Or even worse, could he be working with the Memory Thief and have set us on the wrong path on purpose? Although, he did say that we would have to keep going until we couldn’t anymore, and that only then would we reach the pyramids. But what does that mean exactly? How much longer? We’re running out of food, water, patience, and most important, brain power.

  Over the past few days, we’ve reviewed everything that’s happened to us and all the things you’ve learned so far. I’ve tried to prepare you for what’s about to come. But to be completely honest, I’m not entirely sure what’s next. See, I’ve heard about the Great Word Pyramids, but not much. And the little that I do know, I seem to have forgotten most of it . . .

  Uh-oh . . . Do you think the Memory Thief is slowly stealing my memory already?

  There is one small fact I forgot to mention about the Memory Thief. It turns out that he is stealing people’s memories in order from oldest to youngest. I’m not horribly old, but I am older than you. The fact that my memory seems to be getting worse day by day is troubling. Remember when I couldn’t remember the elf guard’s name in the previous chapter? Ah, I actually can’t quite think of it now, either . . . What was it again? Do you remember?

 

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