Some numbers obviously count for more

By Sandy Sims

I remember the day I wrote the date 8-8-88. I was at the check stand at Nob Hill Foods. The clerk said something like, "Look at that. There won't be another 8-8-88 for a thousand years.

"Yes," I said and finished writing the check. I was unimpressed. (I guess 7-7-77 just slipped by completely unnoticed.) This year, for some reason, probably due to my advancing age and realizing that some things--for example, Haley's comet--come just once in a lifetime, I'm actually anticipating the day I'll write 9-9-99, fleeting thrill though it will be. I might pay bills on that day just to prolong the ecstasy.

Some dates are more interesting to write than others. Take 3-13-99 or 4-7-99: b-o-r-i-n-g. That is, if there's no outside influence like it's your birthday or some momentous historical occasion.

In fact, significance in the world of numbers (without outside influence) boils down to patterns, rhythm and symmetrical chunks. For the most part, our celebratory numbers are divisible by 5 or 10. Maybe because the 5s and 10s are far and away--after the 2s, of course--the easiest to learn. Saying them aloud is a pattern in itself, 5-10-15-20-25-30-35-40 ... . We're talking rhythm even if it is like a jump-rope chant. That's until you get to 100 and the pattern comes to a screeching halt.

But 100s sing "celebrate me" like no other number.

When it comes to our country's birthdays, we didn't even blink at the 64th or the 122nd birthdays. But we went for the 100th in a big way--maybe a little recognition for the 150th. And for the 200th we practically blew our brains out.

One is always a significant number--first birthday, first kiss, first anniversary, first car, first baby,--firsts make anything special and generate a weird kind of glow, a blush, a gush of sentimentality. "Awwwww look, it's Johnny's first tooth." Who cares about the second or third tooth? After that numbers lose their impact until they hit the symmetry thing.

We publicly celebrate wedding anniversaries that fall on numbers like 10, 20, 25 or 30. In fact, if we were to send out an invitation for the 17th or the 23rd--without some explanatory note--invitees might just wonder what was wrong--were we terminally ill?

Birthdays correspond to decades; the 30th, 40th and so on. The numbers in between only become significant as precursors. For example, your 57th birthday is only significant because it signals the coming of the 60th. Up until about the 80th, the numbers bring a kind of depression.

Then we begin to acquire a certain status for accumulated numbers. By 90 we're almost in the books. At 100, we get a letter from the president.

The coming of the year 2000 is creating a huge stir. The whole world is rallying around 2000. Paris has actually installed a sign on the Eiffel Tower with numbers counting down the days to 2000. As those numbers on the Eiffel Tower render us closer and closer to 2000, emotions are building.

There's nothing historical or anniversarial about the date. It's merely marking the end of the number series 1900 and the beginning of a whole new series. And the number 2000 fits the pattern criteria in spades. It's divisible by lots of 5s and a bunch of 10s, even by 10s of 10s, even 100s.

For me, approaching the number 2000 feels a little like climbing a hill, a place to arrive, a summit, and then I can relax and settle into the next series of numbers. I don't mind admitting that the day I write "1-1-00" will feel very strange. Writing 00 for the year will definitely take a period of adjustment. Well, look at it. It looks like a non-number. In fact, "they" tell us that computers may not make the adjustment.

If the doomsayers are right, the computers won't know what to do with the 00. Which actually brings me back to 9-9-99.

I just learned that this number is significant, not just for its patterns, aesthetics, rarity and the pleasure it brings to check writers, but also for practical reasons. Many of those computer chips that are harboring the giant Y2K bug have had their first big test, the 99th day of the 99th year which was actually 4-9-99 (snore). Which has something to do with setting the chips not by date but by sequential number.

Perhaps, if engineers were more right-brained and recognized patterns they would have understood the divisible-by-10 thing and not gone for the divisible-by-9 thing which breaks absolutely all the rules.

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Sandy Sims is a Los Gatos Weekly-Times staff writer.

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