Handy or not so handy tips.

You know how there are certain bits of information, sometimes useful, sometimes utterly trivial, that stick with you and come up over and over again?

1: How to tie a square not- Right over left and under, left over right and under.
-Learned from girlguides, aged 10. I use this at least once a week.

2: When you jump or run, you bleed a little into your "hipcups".
(Still a little vague about this grotesquely named body area, but I have a vivid image of what I think it looks like. Bones, cup-shaped, holding your hip bones which end in a ball shape that fits into the "cups", small pools of blood inside the "cups". Why do I find the word "cups" so disgusting. I can't even print it without quotation marks as my typographic representation of cringing.)
-Learned this from Mr. Pierson, my insane gr.9 science teacher. I think of this at least once a month after running for the train or jumping down a few steps.

3: Count elephants after a lighting flash until the thunder happens to know how many kilometers away the storm is.
-Everyone knows this one. I used this prolifically as a child. I really preferred to self-soothe as a kid and found science to be extremely comforting. I still think of this trick during thunderstorms, but I don't count anymore.

I had more but I won't remember them until they come up again. What are yours?

Here's another list because I'm feeling listy today?

Songs that instantly bring you back to being a kid. A young kid. A not even started school yet kid.

1: Nightflight to Venus- Boney M
2: Saturday Night- Bay City Rollers
3: Reflections- Leo Sayer
4: You Don't Have to Call Me Darling- David Allen Coe
5: Anything by ABBA. I have the album images burned into my brain. The one where they are sitting on the park bench- The red-haired one in black, knee-high, leather boots and a white shawl, the blond-haired one in blond suede, knee-high boots and denim and she looks sad, it's autumn and the leaves are all around them.
6: Cover of the Rolling Stone- Dr. Hook.

What are yours?