Messages by the Numbers

Remember favorite numbers? Mine was seven. I liked how it combined the magic numbers three and four; how it was prime; how it looked, especially when my first-grade teacher executed it in Palmer script; how there were five sevens in our family’s seven-digit phone number; and how, when doubled, it became the date of my birthday.

Numbers have always worked, like words, as symbols. Think of the nine muses, the seven deadly sins, the 10 commandments, the Trinity, the four directions. I remember a camp song (not from a religious camp, mind you) that culminates:

I’ll sing you twelve, O Green grow the rushes, O What are your twelve, O? Twelve for the twelve apostles Eleven for the eleven who went to heaven, Ten for the ten commandments, Nine for the nine bright shiners, Eight for the April rainers, Seven for the seven stars in the sky, Six for the six proud walkers, Five for the symbols at your door, Four for the gospel makers, Three, three, the rivals, Two, two, the lily-white boys, Clothed all in green, O One is one and all alone And evermore shall be it so.

Other numbers are not so heavenly. I first became aware of 666 from watching the 1976 movie The Omen, when Gregory Peck discovers it on his adopted child’s scalp and knows he is the Antichrist. The number itself, however, was apparently political in origin and referred to the Roman Emperor Nero, who was considered a vicious devil by the Hebrews who wrote the Book of Revelations.

Then there’s “420-friendly,” a phrase I ran across while helping my college-age son look for apartments on Craigslist. I knew it referred to April 20, which may one day appear on your Google calendar as Pot Smoking Day. (Hey, Groundhog Day, April Fools’ Day, and the Hindu spring festival Holi are already there.) What I learned only recently is that it began as the magic moment after school let out in San Rafael, Calif., where marijuana aficionados would gather in front of a statue of Louis Pasteur, affectionately known as Louie.

I started thinking about these number codes last week, when NPR, purveyor of eclectic news, announced a feature about a license plate recalled by the State of Illinois for bearing the number 1488. Apparently that number or its variants — 14/88, 14/23, 88 — refers to white-supremacist beliefs. The 14 refers to the 14-word white-supremacist slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The 88 nods to the eighth letter of the alphabet, hence HH or “Heil Hitler.”

The Anti-Defamation League features a page devoted to numerical hate symbols, which might leave you worried that you could inadvertently signal hate just by choosing a cellphone number. Fewer numbers seem devoted to benign propositions like love or peace. There’s the iconic V sign, which originally signaled victory in World War II, with a nod to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. It evolved into a sign for peace in the 1960s and continues as such, though I’m not sure anyone thinks of it as referring to the number 5. (Be sure, by the way, to make this gesture palm outward, especially in certain countries where forming the same V with your palm inward is taken as an insulting gesture.)

Also in the 1960s, we learned from Three Dog Night that

One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do Two can be as bad as one It’s the loneliest number since the number one

Sheesh. Let’s get some love going in the numbers, folks. I propose starting with 7. Who’s got other magic combinations to recommend?