Knuckles
The French typically use a mnemonic by counting on the knuckles of one's hand to remember the numbers of days of the months. Count knuckles as 31 days, depressions between knuckles as 30 (or 28/29) days. Start with the index finger knuckle as January, and count one finger at a time towards the little finger knuckle (July), saying the months as you go. Then jump back to the index finger knuckle (now August) and continue for the remaining months.
One variant of this approach differs after reaching the little finger knuckle (July): instead of wrapping around back to the index finger, some people reverse direction and continue from the little finger knuckle (counting it for both July and August) and ending on the middle finger knuckle. Still others use two hands (as shown in the diagram, right): starting with the little finger knuckle of the left hand proceed to the left index finger knuckle, then (swapping hands) jump to the right fist's index finger knuckle for August, finishing on the knuckle of the right ring finger (December).
Read more about this topic: Thirty Days Hath September
Famous quotes containing the word knuckles:
“Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“What does headquarters think these guys came over here for, a sewing circle? They go up playing for keeps. Cops and robbers with rocks in the snowballs. Brass knuckles and lead pipes and a roughneck conviction they can lick any man in the world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)