I generally refer to our current President as "Bush II" or "Bush the Younger." My Admin Law professor insists on referring to him as "Bush 43," since he's apparently the 43rd President. So today, when she started talking about something and explicitly told us not to write it down, I thought it would be fun to see if I could think of all 43 presidents, and began the task of writing them in the margin of my notebook. I shot out Bush II through McKinley in reverse chronological order rather quickly, then started writing the names of all the 19th Century Presidents I could think of in no particular order, before stopping briefly with Jefferson, Adams, and Washington. I added Taylor, J.Q. Adams, and Hayes, bringing my total up to 34.
I explained to the woman next to me that I was trying to remember all the Presidents, and she told me I was a nerd. Since she's generally smarter than I am I started asking her for help. I couldn't remember if Hamilton, Madison, and Monroe were presidents. She and the guy next to her helped me reach No, Yes, and Yes. I then began thinking of the section of San Francisco where all the streets are named after inconsequential U.S. Presidents, allowing me to add Fillmore and Van Buren to the list. I racked my brain for presidential trivia. Who was the only unmarried President? Buchanan! I tried to remember conversations with Steve, and realized that I had overlooked Chester Arthur despite the whole Lowenthal facial hair fiasco at UCLA.
Soon I was up to 41, and I began wondering if Cleveland counted as one or two. Sure, he was just one guy, but he had two non-consecutive terms, so technically he was the nth and the (n + 2)th President. Assuming I was right about Cleveland, I left campus with a single President missing from my list. And I was sad. The list, as it stood as of 3:10 p.m., was:
Bush II
Clinton
Bush I
Reagan
Carter
Ford
Nixon
L. Johnson
Kennedy
Eisenhower
Truman
FDR
Hoover
Harding
Coolidge
Wilson
Taft
TR
McKinley
Cleveland
Grant
A. Johnson
Lincoln
W.H. Harrison
B. Harrison
Jackson
Tyler
Polk
Adams
Jefferson
Washington
Taylor
J.Q. Adams
Hayes
Van Buren
Pierce
Buchanan
Fillmore
Arthur
Madison
Monroe
Only during the ride home did I realize who I had forgotten, an omission rendered all the more intolerable by the central role that cartoons have always played in my life. And so as I cruised down the 880 I shouted in exasperated triumph:
you are a nerd.
Now do VPs
Forget VPs, that's totally played out. Try Supreme Court Justices, I came up one short on that, damn that Ward Hunt.
Do the number of Final Fantasy spin off games, list-man.
These are good things to think about during down time in a lecture, but could also be useful mental exercises to help delay orgasm. Although you need to make sure not to picture Melville W. Fuller at a crucial moment.
i'm going to work on memorizing the presidents in order. how many supreme court justices have there been?
the orgasm delay is a good idea. but if an image of franklin pierce slips in there i'm doomed.
I think I can do the presidents in order, but I don't know the justices well at all.
For delay, presidents would work, as does recalling the starting lineup and rotation for the 1991 Atlanta Braves. Not that I've, uh, done that.
There are 108 or 113 Justices depending on how you deal with the "Grover Cleveland Problem"
You'd damn well better go on to make something really great of yourself, or at least become semi-famous. all these stories had better not all be for naught.