The Power of 3 (Hattie of Telegraphs)
March 5th, 2009 Posted in Tell us how YOU are slowly losing your mind |Here’s a brilliantly looney rant from Hattie of Telegraphs (click & scroll to view Telegraphs Showcase)
“As well as insisting on stealing 3 of your chips, 3 bites of your sandwich or 3 sips of your beer, I like to make sure each person has 3 goes on a cigarette if it’s being shared. Preferably, each of those 3 goes should involve 3 individual tokes. Thus totalling 9 tokes each, over 3 goes. Problem is, it’s between 2 people… & I really, really, REALLY hate the number 2. 2 & 6 & 36 are awful. 6 is 2 times 3 which is just WRONG. 9 is clearly alright but still a bit dubious as it is 3 times 3, which is timesing 3 2 times, & I have mentioned how I feel about 2. 36 I hate for an altogether different reason. I became infatuated with it for while after doing some bad maths & calculating 3 times 3 times 3 as being 36. It is, of course, 3 times 3 times 3 PLUS 3. OR, 4 times 9. In my OCD insanity I never rethought this sum and so spent a lot of time flirting with 36, courting it, you might even say. Oh, the amount of times I counted things to 36, completely unknowing that really it was a betrayal of all I hold dear to me! Then one day, someone pointed out that 3 times 3 times 3 was, in fact, 27. I felt so mortified, all of this time I had been devoting to something so vile, unable to see it! And poor 27… oh, dear sweet 27, the only number I hold more dear than 3. So, since that shameful date when I realised that I really should have listened to dear old Mr Thomson my mathematics teacher (who wore leather ties, lived with his mother at 45 & had a phobia of spiders & teenage girls) I have endeavored to show my love & commitment to the number 27. I mean, even the 2 digits that exist so knowingly, side by side, total 9, which of course, is the sum of 3 plus 3 plus 3. I know… all the totals of the 2 digits that make up the 9 times table total to 9 which is why I can do my 9 times table (on my hands) but when 27 does it? Well, it just feels so much better than when any other number does it. Ahhh.”
