I can’t resist counting. Yes, I’d like to think that family, friends, and other readers and writers count on me and that I count to my students, colleagues, and employer. But that’s not what I mean. There’s something compelling and gratifying about setting the digital timer on the microwave and then turning the potato each time the numbers run precisely down to zeroes —3:00, 2:00, 1:00 — so that by :00 it’s evenly cooked all the way through. Those round numbers offer a kind of satisfaction I don’t get by wearing matching socks or singing along word for word to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” or even inhaling the sweet smell of melting butter on that hot potato.
Of course, in other situations I count because it’s merely sensible, like when balancing my checkbook, or hygienic, when calculating the number of miles to the next rest area after drinking six cups of coffee, or habitual, when counting the steps in each flight of stairs to my third-floor office: 7, 5, 7, 7, 5, 7, 5, 7. But even then, this isn’t just mindless tallying for its own sake. I suppose it’s become a habit because counting leads me to other things I wouldn’t have noticed or thought about if I hadn’t paid attention to the numbers.
Take those steps, for instance. Obviously, various architectural requirements result in all those 7’s and 5’s—the physical space available for the stairwell, the standard height of ceilings, the necessary width and height of each step, etc. But might not fear or superstition also play a part? Just like tall buildings often skip unlucky 13 when numbering floors or hotels replace room number “420” with “419 + 1” because of 420’s association with cannabis consumption, maybe the architect or the contractor or an administrator intentionally chose 7 because it’s a lucky number.
This, of course, raises an obvious question: why is 7 considered lucky? Most sources point to its significance in religions; for example, according to the Christian Bible, after creating the heavens and the earth, God rested on the seventh day, which is why a week consists of seven days. When seven priests blowing seven trumpets circled Jericho seven times for a seventh day, the walls fell and Joshua and the Israelites took the city. When Peter asked Jesus if forgiving his brother “seven times” was adequate, Jesus said no, that he should forgive him “seventy times seven.” Plus, in Revelation John’s letter to the seven churches is rife with sevens. And don’t forget seventh heaven, which, according to the ancient Greeks, is the uppermost domain where only angels and God reside. Clearly, almost anyone of any religious persuasion would consider achieving this seventh realm an extremely fortunate event.
But many of us probably don’t think of 7 as being the most common and symbolic Biblical number. Three is the more obvious candidate because of its association with the Trinity, the Magi bearing gifts, Peter denying Jesus three times, Jesus rising on the third day, etc. And one need only revisit fairy tales, myths, and Joseph Campbell’s theory of archetypes to appreciate the almost universal recognition of the power of the number 3. However, the word “three,” which originated with the prehistoric Indo-European trejes and acquired various forms in other languages, such as the Spanish tres, German drei, and English “three,” is also the precursor of several related words, some of which I didn’t expect. While “trio,” “triple,” and “trey” are fairly obvious, others, such as “trivial,” are less so. “Trivial” is the adjective form of “trivium,” which in the Middle Ages, referred to the three lower liberal arts — rhetoric, logic, and grammar — while “quadrivium” referred to the upper four: geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music. And though I can’t help noticing that this pecking order and trivializing of fundamental aspects of writing instruction still mostly exist in the academy today, I’m less interested in 3’s connection to academic games than to card games.
“Trey,” what Dad called a three in any suit when we played rummy or hearts, inevitably makes me also think of a “deuce,” not only a two in any suit but also the term used in tennis when the score is 40-all; at “deuce,” which comes from the Latin duo and the French à deux, one player has to win two consecutive points in order to win the game. But “trey” and “deuce” aren’t the only words that cards and tennis have in common. If in a hand of buck euchre Dad took all the points and I got blanked, he’d point out the “nice big goose egg,” or 0, under my name on the score sheet and grin as he shuffled the cards. Surprisingly, the zero as a metaphorical egg again causes tennis and cards to converge since a score of zero in tennis is called “love,” probably because of its similarity to l’oeuf, the French word for “egg,” its shape obviously resembling a zero.
However, “love,” rather than suggesting the product of poultry as a metaphor for 0, more often refers to affection. This comes from the Indo-European leubh-, the source of the Latin libīdō and English “libido,” German lieb or “dear,” and English “leave,” meaning “remain” or “permission,” which also gives us “furlough,” “eleven” — one left or remaining over ten — and “twelve” — two left or remaining over ten. Even the word “believe” has the same source, implying that “to love” is to “trust in” or “have faith in.”
Of course, spreading or encouraging this faith — in Latin fide, as in the Marine Corps motto “Semper Fidelis,” or “Always Faithful” — requires that it be propagated like crops or trees, especially religious faith. But the Latin for “propagation of the faith” is propaganda fide, from which we now have the English words “propaganda,” “propagate,” and “pagan,” the last of which was formed from propaganda’s base pāg-, meaning “fix.”
And I suppose that’s what I am: a pagan or country-dweller, one fixed to the country, often letting my mind wander the sties and stairways of words and numbers and hoping to find those that count because they retain meaning through time, that amount to more than coincidence, and that account for what we may not even understand.
