Prime Time

Last night my girlfriend suggested I look at WolframAlpha:



It's a computational search engine and I have no idea how it works. None. Anyway, she suggested I type in my birthday which I did: February 17, 1976. Among other bits of information, the search turned up the fact that, as of last night, I had been alive for exactly thirty-three years, three months and three days, almost precisely one third of a century! What are the odds of that? No, seriously! Isn't that totally ridiculous?

And to add to that last night I had a dream that 1) I had cancer, 2) I tested positive for HIV and 3) I had to serve time in prison for an overdue speeding ticket - a true bad news triple-whammy (incidentally, when I got to prison in my dream it wasn't so bad - I spent all my time playing pick-up basketball with the other inmates and I had a really sweet cross-over, but I digress...).

So, of course, today I've been thinking about the significance of threes. Let's see...we've got the Holy Trinity - the father, the son and the holy ghost - one of many representations of the mind, body, spirit split. We've got past, present, future. The Greeks had the Three Fates, the Three Gorgons AND the Three Furies. We've got Heaven, Earth and Hell. We have the three stages of life: child, adult, elder. If you believe in reincarnation we can include: life, death, rebirth. We've got thought word, deed. We've got animal, vegetable and mineral. Hollywood likes to make their action series in trilogies. And David Berman's got that lyric about background singers always coming in 3's.

Anyway, the list goes on and on. I'm sure however long it is it's a multiple of three (yes, I just went there). The date when I'm exactly two-thirds of a century old? June, 23rd 2042. See you then!