Where are you, Kevin Trudeau?

We all love the sound of our own names--Dale Carnegie and his ilk have been capitalizing on this vanity for decades--but is it really as special when the person invoking ours can remember everyone else's? Kevin Trudeau posited that it was. In the 90s, I can home from school to find his MegaMemory audio tape set sunning in our kitchen, and while it was my mother's lark, I was the one who skulked around with the tapes...He was slick, and made it seem like committing grocery lists to memory was some arcane shortcut to genius. But it did help with the mid-term on macromolecules.

And what has he been up to since then? Besides bearing a heartwarming resemblance to Haley Joel "HJO" Osmond, he's been busy dodging the FTC and shrouding homeopathic cures with a passionately documented paranoia. Someone has to make Ron Popeil sweat!

But who's the prototype Kevin's channeling? Simonides, perhaps, is the one we can really thank. This Greek poet recalled the names of every person killed by a roof collapse just by remembering where they sat...Hence, a universe of beloved acronyms: PEMDAS, Roy G. Biv, and so many more.

And while you're eating all that chocolate today & you want to reminisce about your grade-school crushes in HD, just try cutting all the sweetness with:

teas

blueberries

gum

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