My Life by the Numbers

Numbers have had an interesting way of showing up in my life. Not that any of it was planned by me or anyone else in my family or circle of friends, but just by sheer coincidence (or by God’s design, if you wish). Here are some of the unusual ways numbers have appeared in my life’s history:

• I was born in 1935 and graduated from high school in 1953 (third and fourth digits of the two years interchanged).

  While this might seem like a pretty common phenomenon, for those born in the 1900’s who were 18 years old when they graduated from high school (like I was), this only occurred 8 times in the 100-year time span: for the birth-years 1902, 1913, 1924, 1935, 1946, 1957, 1968, and 1979.

  If you were born in the 1900’s and were either 16, 17, or 19 years old when you graduated from high school, it never happened.

• I lived with my parents at 321 North 7^th Street, then later in life moved to California and bought a house whose address was 132 Santa Rosa Way (same three house number digits but in a different order).

  There are only six different combinations of any three different digits. Having two house numbers with the same three digits is in itself unusual, but then to consider that there may be 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, or perhaps even 5- or more -digit house numbers in a given town would seem to make this occurrence even more unusual.

• After marriage, we had one address at 706 Red Maple Drive followed a few years later by having another address at 607 Holmes Avenue (first and third digits interchanged) in two different towns.

  This occurrence also seems rather unusual, given some of the same reasons noted above.

• After moving to Arizona in 1973, we had an address of 1973 Sycamore Drive (house number the same as the year we moved there).

  There are 100 years in any century, so there are 100 1900-years. Getting a four-digit house number corresponding to one of those years is a 1-in-100 probability. There may be 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, or perhaps even 5- or more -digit house numbers in a given town, so that makes the likelihood of this happening even smaller, although the same house number could (and probably does) occur on more than one street in any given town.

• We moved to California in 1976, 200 years after the signing of the U. S. Declaration of Independence in 1776.

  Probably a lot of people could make a similar statement, so there may be nothing particularly unusual about this event, except that it does make the year of our move easier to remember.

• My birthday is May 28. Our older son, David, was born on May 4^th (same month as mine) while our younger son, Dennis, was born on the 28^th of December (same day of the month as mine).

  I have no comment on this, given the variables, planned and unplanned, for a given pregnancy.

Kind of interesting, don’t you think? How about you? Any similar numerical relationships in your life?

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