By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Although reasonably romantic by nature, I missed what should have been an important landmark in our marriage—our thirty-three and one-third years anniversary.
My wife Vicki and I got married on August 12, 1989, in downtown Salt Lake City’s lovely and historic Cathedral of the Madeleine. Last December 12, 2022, marked 33⅓ years together. That’s a big deal, a whole third of a century together, and yet we both missed it.
Why? We (and the rest of our society) have a bias in favor of round numbers.
An New York University marketing professor says it’s because we like things that are simple and easy to process. A number theorist from the University of Wisconsin asserts it’s just one of the fundamental ways we comprehend the world. A mathematician suggests our base-10 counting system is the cause, a system we use because we have ten fingers.
Yet, we also have a counting system based on sixty—the sexagesimal system. The Sumerians and Babylonians used it, and thanks to them we count time in sixty-second and sixty-minute increments, and we measure in 360 degrees. Base-12 exists too—when’s the last time you bought 10 eggs and not 12?
The bottom line is that the numerical value proposition is a matter of tradition or psychology, not math or science. Numbers are numbers. The relative value or significance we give them (e.g. valuing 25 or 50 more than 33⅓) says more about us than about the numbers.
This valuation process also is somewhat arbitrary and contextual. Take the number three. A workplace anniversary of three years is common, and hardly noticed. Kylian Mbappe’s three goals in the recent FIFA World Cup championship game, however, was a rare and notable accomplishment.
I am as round-number-biased as anyone. Last year I got all excited over the 75th anniversary of the Utah Trappist monastery where I grew up (see my book Monastery Mornings), as well as the 50th anniversaries of our first visit there and of the historic visit to Utah by Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Yet, from time-to-time I have tried to monkey with the ingrained round number system we all use and like. For example, just to mess with them, I used to tell our kids I would meet them in seven minutes (rather than five or ten). I also liked to mention that lunch would be served at 12:03 p.m. (instead of 12 noon).
They usually rolled their eyes at my temporal rebel antics. I kept telling myself, however, that I helped them understand there are many ways to look at and understand the world. And I only did this with family, of course. I am not sure a client would appreciate me trying to start a morning meeting at 10:18.
I am sad my wife and I missed our chance a few weeks ago to celebrate 33⅓ years of wedded bliss. I think I had the perfect gift for the occasion—an old vinyl album. For those of you who never owned a record player, these albums were called “thirty-threes” because the exact number of times they rotated on a turntable in a minute was 33⅓ times.
The great thing about breaking out of the round-number-anniversary straight jacket is that there always will be another looming opportunity to honor important things that really should be celebrated every day. I will let you know how our thirty-three-and-seven-twelfths wedding anniversary party goes next month.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
