The True Book of Mostly Unrelated Stories

By the Numbers
by John Mooy

I was driving to Hope College the other day on I-96. I noticed the speed limit was posted at 70 miles per hour. I checked the time, and it was 7:15 a.m. The gas gauge told me I had 3/4 of a tank of gas and I had the radio tuned to 96.4. Another sign indicated I had 14 miles to go to get to Holland and I had to be on the lookout for exit 41 due to road construction. The radio brought me the scores from the current NBA basketball playoffs, all of course in numbers.

For some reason, I began to think about how much of our lives are filled with numbers, some we are required to recall, and others simply come and go. I mention this because often I hear people say, “oh, I can’t remember that.” In reality, the lapse in memory may be due in part to the fact that the older we get the more we have to remember.

In my youth, we lived at 102 Elm Street and for years our phone number was simply 2571. I graduated with my classmates in 1964 with 50 other students. In one of the most important basketball games we had in 1963 in the regionals, we lost a heart breaking game to Richland by a total of 3 points.

 In the mornings, up until recently, it was dark when I would leave the house for work. I didn’t want to turn the lights on to disturb my wife so going downstairs I grabbed hold of the railing and counted down the 7 steps, turned left on the landing and then walked down another 7 steps.  

And if you went to school in Marcellus as I did in the 50’s and 60’s, you went into that beautiful old orange brick building for grades K through 12. During those school years we had Miss Cobb who introduced us to the mystery of algebra.  2x = 10.  x = ______?  To this day algebra remains a mystery to me.

Mr. Jensen introduced us to another mystery which was called chemistry class. And please do not mix up H2O with H2SO4. You could keep these formulas straight by remember this jingle:

Little Willie was a chemist,

little Willie is no more.

What he thought was H20

Was really H2S04.

   So, as you see the numbers are everywhere.

   49067…………………need I say more.

   4 X 7 = ____________You see we have other numbers that we can pull up at the snap of a finger.  

30 days hath September, April, June, and November, all the rest have 31, except for February which has 28.

In summation, we use numbers in time, date, year, and weather. We use numbers in school and work, counting money, measurements, phone numbers, reading, page numbers and TV channels.

Have a great week Marcellus, 

you’re the best.  And in my book, you’re

NUMBER ONE.  1