Always forgetting your wedding anniversary? Can't remember your kid's birthday?

How about the name of that guy you just met? Don't have the foggiest idea?

Mr. Memory can help.

Ron White of Euless won the USA Memory Championship in New York last month and will head to the world championship in Bahrain this fall.

White memorized a 167-digit number in five minutes. He recalled the order of a deck of playing cards in less than 90 seconds. He remembered myriad details about strangers.

His victory was unforgettable.

"My competitors said I deserved to win," White said. "My training was intense because I wanted to feel worthy of winning. I wanted to feel like I deserved to win."

But you don't need to be a champion to be good at remembering stuff. Anyone can improve his or her memory, White said, as long as they work at it and have a positive attitude.

So pay attention – do the memory champion proud.

"Everybody has suffered with memory challenges, whether you're one of the best in the world or whether you have an untrained memory," White said. "The good news is that everybody can get better."

To win the championship, White duked it out in a variety of thinking man's games with 51 other "mental athletes."

White had to match names with their correct faces. He rattled off biographical details of five people, including their names and favorite hobbies, cars and foods.

After winning, White told the New York Post: "If I wasn't such a man, I would cry."

When he heard about the Memory Championship, he figured a victory would be good for business: He holds memory seminars. He could include the award in his materials.

White, 35, competed in last year's event but didn't win. He said he didn't have a strategy.

He began preparing in May and trained several hours daily.

"I was thinking to myself, 'You're training a year for one day,' " White said. "It was intense."

He honed his skills underwater, using snorkel gear and plastic playing cards to master card memorization.

"It was a psychological game I was playing with myself," White said. "If I could memorize a deck of cards underwater, when the competition came, it would be easy."

It was.

Tony Dottino, founder of the Memory Championship, calls White a poster boy who's confident and has a "bring-it-on" attitude.

"If you believe you can't, you aren't, and you'll make mistakes," Dottino said. "There's a lot more you can do with your brain and your memory than you ever believed possible."

Becoming a memory superstar like White takes time and practice, so let's take a trip down Memory Lane.

It started with a phone call.

In 1991, White was out of high school and got a job as a telemarketer for a chimney-cleaning firm, trying to score customers.

He called a man who wasn't interested, but said White made him laugh. The man offered him a better-paying telemarketing job – calling offices to schedule memory seminars.

White found the seminars entertaining and soon formed his own memory company.

Now White travels the world, offering 150 seminars a year. Companies hire him to talk to sales forces because White says remembering names can boost sales. Businesses pay him as much as $5,000 for his speeches, according to his Web site, militarymemoryman.com.

One way to sharpen your memory: Think of your brain as a filing system.

"Whatever you want to recall, you have to have a place to store it," White said. "If you have files in your office, you don't throw them on the floor. You put them in a file cabinet. Our minds are the same way."

To improve your memory, White offers this exercise:

•Take items you want to recall and mentally connect them to objects in your house. Perhaps you want to remember an eagle and paper.

•Scan a room, such as your home office. Visualize an eagle flying to the computer; imagine paper stacking up on the phone.

Visualizing items in a familiar place, such as a home, allows for faster recall, White said.

So how do you remember names of people you just met?

If you meet Steve, think of a stove. For Lisa, think of Mona Lisa. For Rick, think of a brick.

Find something on their faces that sticks out. If Steve has a big nose, picture the stove on his nose.

But even Mr. Memory can forget. He's lost keys and couldn't find his truck at an airport.

"If I don't use a memory method, my mind is average," White said.

How do you avoid losing keys? White suggests putting them in the same place each time. Or imagine your keys are a hand grenade. If you place them on a table, envision the table exploding.

What about remembering a loved one's birthday?

"The best way to remember it," White said, "is to forget it once."

Pay attention. Don't multitask. Study in a quiet place with no interruptions.

Involve as many senses as possible. Even if you're a visual learner, read out loud what you want to remember. Try to relate information to colors, textures, smells and tastes.

Relate information to what you already know. Connect new data to information you already remember, whether it's new material that builds on previous knowledge or something as simple as an address of someone who lives on a street where you already know someone.

Rehearse information frequently. Review what you've learned the same day you learn it.

Be motivated and stay positive. Tell yourself that you want to learn what you need to remember, and that you can learn and remember it.

Use mnemonic devices. They help us to associate the information we want to remember with an image, sentence or word. Use a microphone to remember Mike or a rose for Rosie. To remember the notes E, G, B, D and F on the treble staff, use the sentence: "Every good boy does fine."

Be healthy. Exercise. Manage your stress. Get enough sleep. Don't smoke.