day 44 of 365

In honor of day 44, I'm going to tell you about the mysterious sort of connection I have to repeating number 4s.

I had never had a favorite or special number in my life until about 8 years ago, when I started seeing 44 and 444 and 4444 everywhere. I mean, I don't just see them a little bit. I’m talking about seeing them 5, 10, 20 times a day. On signs, clocks, license plates, in magazines, books, store windows, on TV, in cloud formations, written on the sides of buildings, as part of special phone numbers, on my odometer, on my cereal box, printed on money….. everywhere. If I purposely look for other number combinations (555, 321, 8675309) I see more 4s. If I purposely try NOT to see 4s, I see them even more.

So I did what it seems billions of others have done before me, and googled the repeating number phenomenon. And I discovered that, depending on who/what I wanted to believe, it could mean ANYthing… or nothing. It could be a spiritual message from the universe or statistical coincidence. It could be angels smiling down on me or the wonder of mathematics. I even ran across a funny and grounding poem that features the repeating number theme. Here it is (and I’m sorry I can’t link you to it’s author but I lost the source - - so thanks for the poem, whoever-you-are!)

Imaginary Numbers
I have a friend who does
numerology in California
she called me up one
night & said that 444
was the number of Wal-Mart, which is
30 percent off of 666
& we were both amazed
& then I hung up the
phone & said “Now I
remember why we
moved to Iowa.”

So anyway. Maybe someday I’ll find out what it all means – that there’s a specific reason for me to be having this connection to repeating 4s. But for right now, it’s enough that they’re there, quietly demanding attention. It’s always comforting when they show up. If I see them many times in a day, it’s usually a day when I need reassurance that everything is ok, and once I get that message, then it turns out that everything is, indeed, ok after all.

You can read about another blogger’s numerical experience at m.heart’s secret notebooks wild pages blog posting for January 21st.

Happy Day 44!

day 32 of 365

We used to play a game when I was younger where you write your name and the name of your secret (or not-so-secret) crush on a piece of paper. Your cross out the letters that the two names have in common, and then calculate your relationship status based on the remaining number of letters in each name. The end results were easily manipulated so that it would come out however you wanted by using a person's full name, middle name, nickname.....whatever worked. The goal was to have it end up with the two of you walking hand and hand into the sunset together, and living happily ever after.

If only connections were that easy. I'm sure we could each fill up a drawer in this old card catalog with the failed connections we've made. The trick is to file them away and move on. There's a sunset waiting out there somewhere.

Do you want to create your own altered card catalog photo? I did this one using picnik, but picasa or photoshop would work just as well. I'll be posting an unedited version of this photo on my flickr page for your free use. All I ask is that if you do use it you'll link to the original and post a link to your resulting photo. I'd love to see what you do with it!

PS: This card catalog used to house the maritime card files of historian and author Henry Crocker Kittredge. The cards have been moved to our library's archives, but the catalog has such character that we keep it in our historic research room, along with other wonderful treasures.