Triskaidekaphilia
I’ve always been fond of the number 13. When I was young, somewhere around 8 or 10, we moved into an apartment building. There were fifteen floors, numbered 1 to 12, then 14, 15 and 16. Similarly, the apartments on each floor were numbered 1 to 12, then 14 to 17. It seemed so silly to me. Did the people in 1414 not notice, that they were “really” in 1313. Oh well, as long as we don’t mention it.
It’s always seemed to me that 13 is a bit of an outsider among smallish numbers. The numbers from 0 to 9 are quite an clique. I can just see them peering over their lorgnettes and murmuring that those others are “just not our type”… With all this metric system, 10 has gotten quite an exaggerated sense of it’s own importance. And 12, well, that’s a dozen. And any number that describes a collection of doughnuts or bagels is bound to feel a certain dignity.
Eleven feels a certain modest pride for its role in keeping books organized. The ISBN number makes use of eleven by way of making sure that there isn’t a typo as an ISBN is copied over. The number after the dash at the end is the remainder when the rest of the number is divided by 11. And that’s why sometimes the ISBN number ends in X–it means that the remainder is 10, so the ISBN uses the Roman numeral.
But 13, it seems to me, on top of being quite “underutilized”, has the disadvantage of calumny having to do with the “unlucky” nature of dinner parties where there are a total of 13 diners. But really, I’ve never understood why anyone would believe that some numbers are more unlucky than others.
And, besides, 13 is a prime number, and that’s rather special. Anyway, I’m a fan.
Tags: Spirit, supersitition, thirteen, triskaidekaphobia
Bob