The other day someone asked me how many days there are in April. The other thoughts roving around in my head screeched to a halt so my brain could tackle the question posed. How many days in April? I shuffled through all the things I learned in my lifetime, either from school or experience.
I know all the vowels and primary colors. I learned my multiplication tables by rote, although I resisted. I can explain photosynthesis in a general way.
I memorized all those little tricks for spelling like “i before e except after c” and when trying to remember whether to use “there” or “their,” I remembered “there is an ‘heir’ in their.” In order not to confuse desert and dessert, I only needed to remember dessert has two s’s because “you always want more.” There is a “‘lie’ in believe” and “‘pie’ in a piece.’” These also fall under the “i before ‘e’ rule.”
When my kids asked why a body of water is blue until you scoop a glassful, I was able to explain it. I explained the birds and the bees. When they asked about earthquakes, I bored and overwhelmed them with a long dissertation about tectonic plates. My daughter recently told me she remembered that conversation. She also told me she thought I was crazy at the time.
“I thought you meant dinner plates,” she said.
I have a working knowledge of Greek mythology, science, world history and U.S. history. I once memorized all the states and their capitals and could recite them by alphabetical order by state or capital. For fun I used to diagram sentences because I knew the parts.
But, ask me how many days are in April and all I can do is shrug.
There is a rhyme that helps people remember the “how many days in a month” question. I used Google to look it up.
“30 days has September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31 except February alone which has 28 or 29 on a leap year.”
Nobody ever taught me that one, I am sure of it. I was rarely absent from school so I am certain it wasn’t taught the few days I wasn’t there. Maybe they did teach it and I wasn’t paying attention.
For me the question is, how do I remember September, April, June and November? Who is to say I won’t remember it as May, June, July and December?
Apparently some other genius was concerned about remembering the wrong months, too, and came up with the “counting knuckles” way to remember which months have 30 or 31 days.
Clench your fists and put your knuckles together and begin naming the months starting with the far left knuckle. The first knuckle is January. To the right is a dip. That is February. The next knuckle is March, the next dip is April, which according to the rhyme is a 30-day month. All the knuckles are 31 days and all the dips are 30 except February, which is the exception.
 Good grief, that’s a lot of work.
 I would have much rather spent a couple of weeks in school memorizing that rhyme instead of reading that book, “The Wanderer” in sixth grade. I don’t remember the author, but I tried to look it up on Google. The only book called “The Wanderer” I could find was written by Sharon Creech, but her book isn’t the one from sixth grade. The one I remember was about a guy wandering around the desert of the Middle East about 500 years ago. The only part of the book I read was the back cover. I was an avid reader, but that book just did not interest me. I refused to read it and earned an “F” on every project that revolved around it, including the diorama and the book report.
Now that I think about it, I’ll bet that rhyme about the number of days in a month was in that book.
I still wouldn’t have read it.
I’m not going to count my knuckles and I probably won’t remember the poem. I already can’t remember the 30-day months without looking back at what I wrote.
Ignorance is bliss, right?
I’ll just shrug and be blissful when someone asks how many days are in the month. 
                                                             – Renee Worthing