Prompt #2

King Philip Came Over From Germany Sunday.

Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

My seventh grade life sciences teacher employed this mnemonic device to help us remember the hierarchy of taxonomic organization. Or at least I think it was her. Maybe it was Mrs. Brodman, my eighth grade science teacher, or even Mrs. Krouse my freshman Honors Biology teacher who taught me these words. To be honest, I can't remember exactly when this little phrase was insinuated into my mind and I certainly have no recollection of what compelled it to lodge so stubbornly in my mind.

Later on in high school I would learn that there was even a higher level of classification beyond Kingdom. Apparently there were three "Domains" that encompassed all life. I promptly amended the mnemonic in my head to Dead King Philip Came Over.... and so on. Now that I'm a freshman in college, I'm learning in my OEB class that these classifications are ostensibly useless. They were just good ol' Linnaeus's arbitrary way of arbitrarily ascribing order to life. Real Biological classification is all relative. It's messy, convoluted, impossible to section off into he efficient lines of a mnemonic device.

Yet I'm sure that the mnemonic (now useless) will persist in my memory, another shard of another time that I'm averse to lose. And in a way it'll still help me. It carries with it the spun memories of an era of biology coursework in my life--the textbooks with their leafy green covers and waxy pages, the pill bugs cowering at the bottom of the jar, gel electrophoresis trays and color coded heart diagrams. Ironically enough, the mnemonic has no relevance to these memories, but it's lumped in with the rest of my biology memories. It's true that I can't pin down any discrete moment that it's been of use to me on a test or in lab but it endures, and I warrant there must be a reason for this, a explanation for why I've come to be acquainted with Dumb King Philip. 

Maybe the mnemonic endures by virtue of its construction. The words may have some pattern or veiled connotation, some variable that makes them unpalatable to forgetfulness. I think that a more plausible guess would be the context in which I was exposed to the words. I was young, impressionable, in love with biology. All the creepy crawly things that repulsed my sister so much enthralled me. So what I learned, I retained, weaving the framework for a latent interest, adding color and meaning to my biological know-how. And that framework still remains, frozen in time... resurrected with the recitation of those words. My natural interest and curiosity made my mind susceptible to memory, opening it up to grab on to all that it could encompass. There's a reason why I can't seem to remember what mnemonic I was taught for the planets of the solar system. Frankly, I have no interest in stars or planetary nebula. Just like I have no interest in the Spanish Language or Electrical Engineering. So when I learn such things, I never ever seem to remember them.