Thursday, June 22, 2006

The Number People

I don't really like math all that much. I much prefer the characters, people, and events found in the humanities. This interest in people may have influenced my ideas about numbers.

I think of numbers as people.

At least the first ten. The rest of them are a little fuzzy in that direction. Most of the odds are male, and most of the evens are female. There are a few exceptions. 6 and 9 are tomboys, and 8 is male as well. Eight is also a bit of a stuck up prick.

I don't know why I think this way. It's not as though I believe they are actual people, I just think of them like I think of characters in books or in movies. 8 is an uptight guy in the same way that Mickey Mouse is a talking mouse who wears gloves.

Either I am just weird, which is entirely possible, or there was some educational program that I watched far back in my youth that made a big impression in that I can't remember the program but I still think of numbers the way that the program portrayed them.

I've always thought that being weird was more interesting than being normal.

Reading: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Listening: Million Colour Revolution by the Pinker Tones
Doing: Ripping up my kitchen floor

1 comment:

audrey said...

Oh my god, I'm totally with you. As far back as I can remember, I've associated gender to numbers AND letters.

1 - male, henpecked by...
2 - female and
3 - female (unsure as to whether all three are involved in a polygamous marriage)
4 - young raffish lad about town
5 - old man with a hat
6 - independent lady
7 - gay male
8 - old fat jolly woman
9 - spinster
10 - ruler of the roost

Basically, after that the pairings of the two are determined by the two numbers together. Like, the tens are all slightly weak because he's henpecked, especially in the 12 combo. The 20s are then quite dominant and bossy. whichever number comes first is the boss, except in the tens.

Let's hear it for weird!

(I won't go into the letter gender divide, but L, M and N are basically identical to 1,2 and 3 except they are more like swingers.)