The Number Thing

I had been saving this story for a rainy day, or, you know a time when I ran out of stuff to talk about. As it turns out, I rarely run out of stuff to talk about, but I’ve hit a huge wall when it comes to writing and so I give you this, my ace in the hole of weirdness. Hold on tight, ladies and gentlemen.

When I was 17 I got a look at my permanent record. You know the one, the one that they supposedly have in the Guidance Counselor’s office? I’m here to tell you that with a note from your parents you can actually go and see and read through that very real document. (It’s probably too late for most if not all of you.) All of your test scores, all of your teachers’ comments, a bizarre historical record of yourself and all things school related, you can look at it, touch it, and even lick it if you’re especially creepy.

I didn’t find a lot that shocked me in my file. Mostly because I’ve always been pretty honest with myself about my flaws, and because I know I talk too much and have always talked too much and always kind of took the “Patti is a chatterbox” comments on my report cards as a compliment. I’m gregarious, and that is part of who I am; it helps me make friends.*

The only surprising thing was, when looking at my standardized test scores, there was a sudden and shocking shift. Up until the fifth grade I was seriously outpacing my reading skills with math skills. This was astounding to me in the 12th grade. I hated math. My senior year my math teacher made a not so veiled threat to actually fail me simply for lack of attention. (I called her bluff.) More shocking? I could tell you exactly what happened in the 5th grade.

So, you know when you’re little and you work on those math worksheets? The timed ones? I was always really good at those because, well, because I made it into a game. Not unusual for a kid, turning work into a game. One of the more clever things that children do, turning work into games.

Well, except, for me, it was more like staging and epic battle amongst the numbers. Because numbers, to me, have identities and personalities. (Yes, present tense.) They even have relationships with one another. (I said hold on.) When I was working on those sheets the number at the end of the row “won” that little battle in the war, depending on the number it was a point in favor for good or evil. There were a lot of elaborate rules that governed who won and who lost, and all I can tell you without really freaking you out is that if a Five or a Six was the last number on the page I was depressed for the rest of the day.** As math got more complicated so did the relationships and the universe of numbers, it got to the point in seventh grade algebra that I started tuning out entirely. I couldn’t deal with the soap opera that was the world of math.

Funny, right? That this cold, linear thing was a veritable Peyton Place for me.

For a long time I didn’t tell anyone about the number thing and then in college I told my friend Liv. I can’t remember how it came up, but she thought it was hysterical – a real hoot. (Sometimes, even now, she’ll say, “Tell me about the numbers again!”)

Well, a couple of years ago I was reading another blog, a blog of a friend, and she was talking about being able to taste colors, that she had something called synesthesia. Well, synesthesia sounded fascinating – so I started reading about it. And then I stumbled on Ordinal Linguistic Personification, a type of synesthesia wherein people assign personalities and genders to numbers and/or letters. So, it turns out that I’m not actually crazy, well not crazy in a way that’s not well documented or heretofore unheard of. It doesn’t help uncomplicated the world that numbers have in my head, but I feel better knowing that I’m normal not-normal.

*Unless you are a teenage boy. I’m pretty sure I was way too overwhelming for the shy, little nerdlings I liked when I was younger.
**The number Five is an evil sociopath and Six is his stupid sidekick. Six, and his pot belly, aren’t inherently evil, but he carries out Five’s dastardly schemes because he doesn’t have any power. Five is just evil enough to control him like that. One, Zero, and Eight are kind of harmless, vapid characters, although Eight leans towards being good because he’s the younger brother of the number Nine – who is our hero (think of him as the hunky, popular football player). I never thought Nine was as cute as Four though, who was handsome and smart and dated number Two… who was kind of the Velma of the group and who was hated by Three… who was good, but was kind of the Veronica to Two’s Betty… I could go on and on. It gets really confusing when we start talking about symbols… and then Algebra brought letters and it got really complicated.

[Editor’s Note: I cannot believe she is not expanding on this. I really think that every single word before the second footnote is just an introduction. She is stubborn as hell with me. Tell her to stop being stubborn.]