2 Comments.

Roger Ritter writes:

I learned that trick in a way that apparently Leo Tolstoy also did. Starting with the knuckle of the index finger on the left hand, and counting knuckles and hollows, you get January, February, etc., until you run out of hand at the little finger knuckle, and June. You then reverse direction, starting with the little finger knuckle as July, and count back toward the index finger.

Perhaps not as intuitive as the method you learned, but it lets you use the index finger of the right hand to keep track of where you are, remembering to double-tap the little finger knuckle.

(Fascinating — many tnx, Roger! But the single-hand-reversal method that you describe doesn't get Leo off the hook: as he tells it, Natasha transitions from one of her mother's hands to the other between June and July. I suspect he had seen the system as a child but didn't properly remember it when he was writing the novel, but that's just my guess ... - MarkZimmermann)

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