Question 123234
I'm so glad you asked!  My 7th grade teacher Mrs. Strugibinetti said commuters go back and forth to work.  So where they are changes.  That is why a+b is the same as b+a.  They are both commuting.  That's the commutative property.
The associative property says a+(b+c)=(a+b)+c.  I don't actually know any trick to remember this, but I guess you can think of it as only an ass puts those silly parenthesis for addition and multiplication... regardless of where they are, the answer is the same.:)