I used to be a high-school student. Time has marched on since then, as has been known to happen. 

During that time, around my sophomore year, roughly twenty-one years ago, my communications teacher introduced his students to an allegedly foolproof method of memorizing passages of text, which goes like this: 1) Say the first line out loud. 2) Repeat the first line, and then say the second line. 3) Repeat the first line, and then repeat the second line, and say the third line out loud. 4) Keep doing this until you run out of lines. 

To demonstrate, he led the classroom in the recitation, using his tedious method, of a strange little poem, that goes a little like this: 

A big fat hen; 

A couple of ducks; 

Three brown bears; 

Four running hares; 

Five fit fiddlers; 

Six simple Simons, sitting on a stump; 

Seven Sicilian sailors, sailing the Seven Seas; 

Eight egotistical egotists, egotistically echoing egotistical ecstasies; 

Nine Nubian nudes, nimbly nibbling gnats, knuckles, and nicotine; 

I slit the sheet, and on the slitted sheet I slit I slit. 

I’ll be damned if maybe he wasn’t just a little bit right.