tiggermnI recently read a blog post where the author talked about how numbers were alive for her. Each had a gender and a relationship and were a family and had certain behaviors.
That made me recall how I perceived things growing up, and talking with others I found I wasn’t alone, although each person had their own sense of how the numbers, or letters or even colors related to each other.
So I thought I would share mine. I’ll start with numbers:
Each number had a gender and was part of a family and and had a relationship with another number (most everything else was setup like this, with variations). The only way I can explain it is to just lay it out.
Male Numbers: 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 30, etc. all the way up
Female numbers: 2, 4, 8, 9, 12, 14, 18, 19, 20, etc. all the way up.
0 didn’t really have a gender per se, but always felt a little more “male” to me. Now, here is where it gets tricky to follow:
0 was kind of the parent of all numbers. Trying to keep the piece between the two families. (Yes, the two families fought like the Montagues and the Capulets)
Family 1 (the “good” family, they were my favorite): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 were all in the same family (along with their numbers of 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, etc.)
Family 2 (The “bad” family, not that they were bad, but they weren’t my favorite family): 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. were part of the same family (along with their numbers of 16, 17, 18, 19, etc.)
In family 1: 1 & 2 were the parents, and 3, 4, 5 were the kids
In family 2: 9 & 10 were the parents and 6, 7, 8 were the kids
Except that 6, really didn’t want to be apart of the second family, it really like to hang out with 4 and 5 and actually, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 all got along pretty well. But they usually pair up, 4 would hang out with 5, 7 would hang out with 8, 3 and 6 would sometimes pair up or hang out with 4 & 5. It got to the point though were 6 sort of disowned it’s own family and just became sort of neutral.
So that was numbers. Colors were very similar:
Male: Blue, Brown, Black, Purple, Green,
Female: Red, Pink, Yellow, Orange,
Just like 0, white really didn’t have a gender, but leaned very heavily towards the male side, except white really was around black a lot, so I never really knew what was going on there…
They really didn’t have a “Family” order, they just paired up with each other.
Blue + Red dated, Pink + Purple dated, Green + Yellow dated, Brown + Orange dated, Black+ white were whatever they were….
Brown and Orange were kind of the black sheep of the group and weren’t really included with others. Red/blue+pink/Purple would always double date, and green/yellow would occasionally like to hang out with brown/orange, but not often. Green+yellow were VERY into each other.
I guess, black and white always felt like the grandparents of the group…
And then finally letters:
This one was too vast for my child brain to go to far into, but it was like colors in that there was a gender and certain pairings:
Male Letters: A, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, L, M, N, R, T, U, W,
Female letters; B, K, O, P, Q, S, V, Y
Unknown: X, Z (ALthough X leaned towards the male size and Z leaned towards the female side. Z was always kind of the “Bad twin” of S for me).
Pairings: A+B, C+D, E+F, G+H, I+J+K+L, M+N+O+P, Q+R, S+T, U+V and sometimes W, X+Y+Z
Okay, so the pairings above didn’t mean they were dating. They just like to hang out. Although, V really didn’t like U….he was like nerd that no one wanted to be around, but she kept getting paired up with him…she really wanted to be with T, who was more like the “jock” of the group.
So, that is how my weird brain worked things out. It’s interesting what our brains came up with to figure everything out and keep things straight in our head.
(I won’t go into math, but Addition and Multiplication were female and subtraction and division were male…just sayin.)