Hal­cian Pierre

I've al­ways been fas­ci­nat­ed by how num­bers can af­fect our lives and day to day ac­tiv­i­ties (and I'm not just talk­ing about Play Whe dreams ei­ther!). I'm talk­ing about those num­bers that for most of us can ei­ther spell doom and gloom or just be a darn nui­sance. Take to­day's date, for ex­am­ple... April fool's day is al­ways on April first. Ever won­dered why? Well, one pop­u­lar tale dates the tra­di­tion to 1564, when France for­mal­ly changed its cal­en­dar to the mod­ern Gre­go­ri­an ver­sion, and there­by moved the cel­e­bra­tion of the New Year from the last week of March to 1 Jan­u­ary. In this ver­sion of events, those who con­tin­ued to cel­e­brate the end of New Year's Week on 1 April were de­rid­ed as fools – or, as they are known in France, "Pois­sons d'Avril". How­ev­er, it's one of the most an­noy­ing days of the year for most, be­cause of the April fool's pranks. Luck­i­ly, ac­cord­ing to tra­di­tion, the pranks end at mid­day. In T&T that al­so meant that a cut­tail was shar­ing at 12:01 pm, but I di­gress. While on the sub­ject of num­bers, does any­one have a favourite? My late Grand­moth­er's favourite was 3, be­cause she said it rep­re­sent­ed the Holy Trin­i­ty. The num­ber five gets mad love be­cause of the fact that we have five fin­gers and five toes on each limb, and stars have five points. Re­mem­ber the groovy 70s when we used to say "Gimme five," and we'd hold out our hand for a greet­ing slap? (Right on!) Some peo­ple like the num­ber 7, be­cause it's re­put­ed to be lucky. I mean, Snow White was saved by sev­en dwarfs, and there's the say­ing that a sev­enth son of a sev­enth son may have some sort of mega luck and mag­i­cal pow­ers, but on the flip side, sev­en can be­come a dif­fer­ent thing with the men­tion of those sev­en dead­ly sins now.

Take oth­er cul­tures, like the Chi­nese for ex­am­ple. They be­lieve that luck comes with the num­ber 8, and I'm sure you've seen a few casi­nos with lots of eights fea­tur­ing promi­nent­ly in their sig­nage. In fact, one of my graph­ic de­sign­er bud­dies al­so loves the num­ber 8 be­cause, "It's two per­fect cir­cles, one rest­ing on top of the oth­er. A 3 is an eight split in half. A 6 is like piece of the 8 miss­ing, and when you turn it up­side down you get a 9, which is one ex­tra that you don't need. Al­so, the eight looks very much like the in­fin­i­ty sym­bol as well, so to me, it's per­fect." But what about those num­bers that (we be­lieve) aren't per­fect?

For ex­am­ple, does triskaideka­pho­bia mean any­thing to you? Sor­ry to make you bite your tongue there, but it's the fear of the num­ber 13, which many con­sid­er to be un­lucky (and per­fect fod­der for those love­ly hor­ror movies star­ring a ma­chete-wield­ing Ja­son Voorhees). It's a fear that has made its way even to build­ing con­struc­tion, and many high rise ho­tels and pent­hous­es do not have a 13th floor. Yet, we know what a bak­er's dozen is, don't we? Thir­teen items in­stead of 12, cre­at­ed so the bak­er or buy­er could get (or give) a lit­tle some­thing ex­tra. See? Not so un­lucky af­ter all, right? Of course, we can't talk about un­lucky num­bers with­out men­tion­ing the most fate­ful (and pos­si­bly the most in­fa­mous num­ber of them all), those three six­es men­tioned in the Holy Bible. You want to know the name for this one? It's hexa­ko­sioi­hex­ekon­ta­hexa­pho­bia. (Don't wor­ry; I don't even try pro­nounc­ing it ei­ther.) Every­one knows that the num­ber orig­i­nat­ed from the Bib­li­cal verse in Rev­e­la­tion 13:18, which says the num­ber 666 is the Num­ber of the Beast, linked to Sa­tan or the An­ti-Christ. Know­ing this, you would think that peo­ple would go all out to try to avoid it ap­pear­ing in some way or the oth­er, but it doesn't al­ways work. I re­mem­ber one in­ci­dent in a gro­cery where a woman's shop­ping bill to­talled $666.66 and her eyes opened big like Cook­ie Mon­ster. She im­me­di­ate­ly grabbed some sweets off the shelf, pelt­ed them on the counter and told the cashier, "Add that eeeeen!" to change the to­tal. "Not me and that one nuh!" she had said, rolling up her bill and stuff­ing it in­to her purse. I won­der how she would have re­act­ed know­ing that stand­ing be­hind her was the own­er of a mo­bile phone num­ber with a 666 in it? (Cue thun­der and light­ning...)

The best (and fun­ni­est) sto­ry that I've ever heard in­volv­ing those three six­es came from a gen­tle­man I saw dri­ving a rental car with a 666 li­cence plate. (And no, he didn't have horns.) He ex­plained that his wife's orig­i­nal ve­hi­cle had gone for ser­vic­ing and the com­pa­ny gave them a Hyundai Tus­con to use in the in­ter­im. "When I first saw the li­cence plate I did a dou­ble take," said *Steve. "I asked the peo­ple, 'Umm, you don't have an­oth­er car?' They said no. Plus, time was go­ing and the wife and I had re­al moves to make, pick up our son, etc., so we took it. Then the wife and I pulled up by the gas sta­tion to get some gas. All the pump at­ten­dants dis­ap­peared, so we had to do it our­selves. We pulled out from the gas sta­tion and peo­ple were just look­ing at the car... I mean, LOOK­ING at the car. Their eyes were say­ing, 'That is a wrong num­ber to have.' I start­ed won­der­ing if I could get this thing blessed, but how you bless a ve­hi­cle with 666 in it... the priests might say, 'Is a joke or what?!?'" Dri­ving on the high­way to head to South Trinidad was just as ad­ven­tur­ous, in that no one want­ed to dri­ve ei­ther in front or be­hind the ve­hi­cle. "It's true. When they saw the car com­ing, it was like the Red Sea part­ing... peo­ple would just move out of the way or over­take me just to get in front of me, and they do­ing that and look­ing quick to see who dri­ving this car. I looked in the rear view and the road be­hind me was clear! Close to home, I reached a ze­bra cross­ing and stopped for some folks to cross. They watched the li­cence plate. They watched me. They said, 'Nah. Is or­right! Yuh could go ahead!' I just shake my head, yes. I couldn't wait to car­ry that ve­hi­cle back to the com­pa­ny. Even though noth­ing bad hap­pened to us, it was weird to see the re­ac­tions. They were prob­a­bly think­ing the car was look­ing for souls, but I am a man of God. I wasn't fright­ened at all."

Now if you hap­pen to be­lieve in nu­merol­o­gy, then you've prob­a­bly tried to find out what your per­son­al num­ber is. Nu­merol­o­gists claim that the let­ters of your name cor­re­spond to cer­tain num­bers, from 1 to 9. (There are no dou­ble dig­its, so if you get a 12, for ex­am­ple, you have to add the 1 to the 2 and there­fore get 3). Well, I found out that mine is 6 (ac­cord­ing to the web­site paulsad­ows­ki.com) and it goes on to say...

"You would like to be ap­pre­ci­at­ed for your abil­i­ty to han­dle re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Your home and fam­i­ly are like­ly to be a strong fo­cus for you, per­haps the strongest fo­cus of your life. Friend­ship, love, and af­fec­tion are high on your list of pri­or­i­ties for a hap­py life. You have a lot of diplo­mat­ic ten­den­cies in your make­up, as you are able to rec­ti­fy and bal­ance sit­u­a­tions with an in­nate skill. You like work­ing with peo­ple rather than by your­self. It is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant for you to have har­mo­ny in your en­vi­ron­ment at all times. You are al­so like­ly to have artis­tic and cre­ative lean­ings." In­ter­est­ing, but I al­ways take these things with a pinch of salt. If it was 100 per cent ac­cu­rate, then it should al­so say that I speak "gib­beridge" and love vanil­la ice cream more than any oth­er flavour, right? I guess what I'm try­ing to say is that you can be­lieve what you will about num­bers; just don't let them dri­ve you nuts. Hap­pi­ly en­joy your bak­ers' dozens when they come, and for­get about where the 13th floor is. Go brave like Steve and dri­ve safe­ly. And as for this April fool's day, just chill out and en­joy it. That should be num­ber 1 on your list!