Many summers ago, when I was young, I got some booze, I got drunk, and I got a hangover. The next morning, I told my dad what happened over breakfast. “We had some wine at the restaurant,” I groaned, “and then a few beers at Mark’s house. It doesn’t seem enough for me to feel this bad.” My dad chuckled the chuckle of the knowing. He then said something I carry with me to this day: “Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer.”
Years later, I’m fairly certain my dad was dealing in aphoristic pseudoscience, but the point is that out of all the many tidbits of advice he handed down over the years, only a few stick in my memory. And those are the ones that rhymed. There’s a mnemonic heft to a well-turned phrase, and a rhyming line lodges itself far easier than an entire book’s worth of learning.
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There are two important lessons to learn from this. The first is that rhyming is a great mnemonic. If you want to retain it, rhyme it. The second is to appreciate that just because you remember something in rhyme doesn’t make it accurate. My dad’s wisdom, “Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer,” might sound neat but is based on scant and dubious evidence. Better something like “Consume a lot of booze; you’ll get the hangover blues.” Keep in mind that a nice turn of phrase isn’t necessarily better than a clumsier one.
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