Growing up in the days when you still had to punch buttons to make a telephone call, I could recall the numbers of all my close friends and family. Today, I'm not sure if I know more than four phone numbers by heart. And that's probably more than most.

I'm lucky in that I have close friends and family and my agent to advise me.

I have an extended family of close friends, guy and girls.

Once I'd reached the point where I could squirrel away more than 30 digits a minute in memory palaces, I still only sporadically used the techniques to memorize the phone numbers of people I actually wanted to call. I found it was just too simple to punch them into my cell phone.

It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.

Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.