Fun with numbers

As I've stated, I'm a hot mess when it comes to most things mathematical.  That being said, it's not that I don't like anything related to numbers.  I love geometry, for example.  If I'd had better teachers who didn't speak subcontinental English, I might actually have pursued accounting. 

One thing that intrigues me is numbers.  I find codes and ciphers exciting.  I actually study them, much to Karen's everlasting wonderment and chagrin.  Part of this is because codes and ciphers usually have pattens in them that allow them to be decoded or deciphered.  Thankfully, although there's some algebra involved, it's not absolutely necessary.

Today marks the fifty-first post in this blog.  I'm fifty-one.  No big pattern there, just a mere coincidence.

But the number twelve has always been my go-to number, my lucky number, my favorite number.  I think as a kid I read somewhere that quarterbacks favored the number, and since quarterbacks are the leaders of the team, and I wanted to be a leader, I chose twelve.  From such childish notions are lifelong childish behaviors born.

Then one day I noticed a weird thing.  Ernie Banks, Mr. Cub, hit his 500th home run on May 12th.  Again, not a big deal  But he ended up hitting 512 career home runs.  This is the kind of thing that fascinates me.  Sure, as Karen would quickly point out, it's a coincidence.  But it still fascinates me.

I looked up all the people born on the same date irrespective of month; for example, all people born on the fourth of every month.  My list has some impressive people on it.  I've looked up athletes born the year of my birth, 1961.  The results were eye-opening.

I look to see how many months, days, hours and seconds I've been alive.  I keep track of dates and see how they correspond to other dates with meaning in my life.  I see how mirrored numbers, like twenty-four and forty-two, interconnect in a given situation.

The mental gymnastics I do are just for fun.  I'm not like Jim Carrey who has such an obsession with the number twenty-three that he made a film about it. 

But just as a warning, my next post will be my fifty-second post.  My uniform number for our championship basketball team was fifty-two. 

Just sayin'.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles