A comic strip in Japan had a woman calling her ex-boyfriend on the phone. She said she was just thinking about him and wanted to remember when his birthday was. He thought it was sweet. Turns out she had made that her PIN for a ATM card and couldn’t remember it.
My wife used her ex-boyfriend’s birthday for a log-on ID and now I use the joint computer. Never meet the guy, know nothing about it, but I know his birthday.
In 1962/3 I took a Health class taught by our PE teacher (the first freshman to start for Dukes football team, by the way, and ended up playing a couple of years in the NFL). He was telling us about mnemonics for some reason. One example he gave was his first phone number. It was 281-J. He remembered it as two cats eating one jaybird. After all these years that still sticks in my mind even though about a gagillion useful items have drifted away.
I still remember the phone number of my best friend in high school. It had a really easy pattern on the keyboard. I occasionally manually dial my wife’s cell number every now and then so I can keep it in memory, just in case.
I know my husband’s former best friend’s birthday and I also know that one of the DJ’s at the first radio station I worked at had the same birthday. Then I found out they were friends. That was 20+ years ago. I haven’t interacted with either guy since the early 90’s. Why do I still know this?
I remember the birthday of my childhood best friend, whom I haven’t seen since 1958. I also remember our phone number from the same time, and our car’s license plate number.
I have pretty good memory of sports trivia like numerous World Cup match scores, the Dallas Cowboys’ season-by-season win-loss records dating back to 1988, etc. Almost to an…OCD-like extent.
In 1973, I went thru Basic Electricity and Electronics training as a n00b avionics technician in the Navy. We were given dirty and clean versions of mnemonics to for color codes on resistors and characteristics of transistors. I remember both the dirty and clean versions, but for the life of me, I can’t tell you what they actually mean.
And I know my husband’s ex’s birthday, only because it’s the day after our anniversary. He still had their marriage license when we got married (I guess she didn’t want it when she left him) which is how I learned it. He always remembered Dec 10, but he didn’t know why - I thought it was hilarious.
My current wife’s birthday is only two days apart from my ex-wife’s. That gave me cold sweat for years until I finally figured a way I could be absolutely sure of which was which.
I can remember a school friend’s number; not my best friend, I mean, I can remember hers, but I called her several times a week for years, so that’s no surprise. This number is one I phoned once, because I had forgotten something about a homework assignment due the next day, and I knew the girl sat next to me had written it down, and I kinda knew her home address. I had to call directory enquiries to get the number, and I didn’t have pen or paper, so I recited the number to myself to try and remember it. Worked well enough that 20 years later, it’s still there.
I still use my ex-wife’s email name as my password, and the initials of her daughters as my ATM pin.
My parents got their first phone when I was 4. The number was 7-W. And the license number on my dad’s car then was 628-907. And my town’s population on the city limits sign was 6,798.