Mnemonic Mississippi
The human brain is weird. It’s a bit of an oversimplification and an insult to the wondrous complexity of the organ that has been responsible for thought and cognition and emotions, but it’s true. How can it not be? Human brains brought us air travel, the Theory of Relativity, and the basis for all language. But brains also brought us pizza with cheese stuffed right into the crust, reality TV, and Diet Dr. Pepper. That’s a lot of range.
What I find most fascinating is how the brain almost indiscriminately decides what to recall in any given moment. For example, you can walk into a room and forget why you did it, despite deciding to do it a minute earlier. Or you can be sitting idly while you remember with astounding clarity some completely random memory from 30 years ago.
For me, one such memory comes from an episode of the television show Full House, in which Stephanie Tanner is entered into a spelling bee and enlists her family to help her prepare. Along the way, she learns about mnemonic devices as a way to help remember words. Specifically, her father teachers her how to spell success: “Double the C, double the S, and you will always have success.”
Despite that episode airing nearly 30 years ago, I can still remember that exact moment. Yet I can just as easily not remember a vacation I once went on, a good movie I enjoyed, or what I had for lunch yesterday. Maybe Bob Saget is the key to my memories, or perhaps the episode about mnemonic devices served as its own mnemonic device. It’s probably the second one, but I would have a hard time forgetting that trip to Key West if Bob Saget was hanging around, narrating it America’s Funniest Home Videos-style.
Why did I start this with an extended preamble about a show from the 90s that has somehow found its way back into popular culture? That’s because my favorite mnemonic device has to do with this week’s state, Mississippi.
Specifically, it has to do with how to spell Mississippi, which is an eleven-letter word that consists of only four: M, I, S, and P. That’s as many letters as is needed to spell both the states of Iowa or Utah. If nothing else, I appreciate that kind of literal efficiency put forth by those two states.
Now, onto the mnemonic device, which I was taught by my mother at the age when you learn states and their capitals. It goes:
Em eye (M, I)
Crooked letter, crooked letter, eye (S, S, I)
Crooked letter, crooked letter, eye (S, S, I)
Humpback, humpback, eye (P, P, I)
Writing it down doesn’t do it justice, because there is a certain music that you put to it when you repeat in your head. Prior to this, I never considered the letter S to be crooked, nor P to have a humpback. But I’ve never considered them not to be described that way since. It’s been burned into my memory, a sort of tattoo on my brain about how to spell a state I know knowing about or have never visited. I say again: brains are weird.
As for the origin of the name Mississippi, it unsurprisingly has everything to do with the Mississippi River, which is the third longest river system in the world. The name came from the French pronunciation (Messipi) of a Native American (specifically of the Anishinaabe) word Misi-ziibi, which means “Big River” or “Father of Waters.”
The accompanying woodwork was a tale of two pieces. For the most part, the border of Mississippi was fairly straightforward. The northern and eastern border are mostly straight lines, as is the bulk of the southern border. The western border, which is almost entirely defined by the Mississippi River, is complex and jagged. Water will find the easiest path, but that doesn’t mean an easy go of it for a woodworker hunched over a bandsaw.
