Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas, the former basketball star, teamed up years ago and wrote a sensational little self-help manual: THE MEMORY BOOK.

You might have seen these two appearing on The Tonight Show. Their act consisted of simply memorizing and then repeating in order the names of everyone in the audience during a given program.

That amounted to hundreds of names!

They accomplished several things with their wizardry:

(1) They demonstrated that memory isnt passive; its an active device that anyone can learn to improve;

(2) There is no practical limit to the amount we can remember; and

(3) What is often thought to be a listening problem is really a memory problem.

It is the third item that concerns me in this article.

But before I get to that, let me throw a few definitions at you.

Hearing is registering sound vibrations. We do that all the time, whether it is the whooshing of cars outside of our office or the faint joyful voices of children playing down the block.

Listening is making sense of what we hear; interpreting it and placing a meaning on it. Oh, those must be the kids at the playground, we think, when we start to listen.

Remembering is recalling accurately what we listened to.

To remember, according to Lorayne & Lucas, we need to ACTIVELY ASSOCIATE what we hear with something else.

In another article I mentioned my frustration when waiters make three errors in processing my soft drink order.

I say: Ill have a Diet Coke, no ice, and a slice of lime, please.

Over half the time they either fill the glass with ice, attach a bright yellow lemon, or serve me regular Coke.

Lorayne & Lucas would say theyre listening all right, but theyre not remembering. Servers should associate what Im saying with ABSURD images, because the more unusual the images, the easier it will be to remember what they stand for.

They could envision a fizzy Coke spilling over the edge of an ultra-skinny glass without any obstacles, and me spilling from the glass while grabbing a bright green, metallic lime tree to save myself.

To remember my order all they would have to do is to see that image.

Of course, servers do have listening problems, too.

Those that start sneaking away from our tables before weve finished speaking, are also poor listeners.

Restaurants and all businesses would be wise to teach both listening and memory skills, and if they did, theyd have happier customers and make more money.

(Now for your Memory Quiz: What was the title of Lorayne & Lucas book?)