I first posted this as a blog on myspace. It's a true story, and I don't feel bad saying I'm kinda proud of it. Here it goes:
Numbers and Counting: A study of how neurotic I really am.
Denzel Washington has an almost perfectly symmetrical face. I learned this in Psychology 101. Apparently, having wholly balanced facial features is one of the characteristics of beauty.
I have a vested interest in balance, not because I’m interested in beauty, but because I have what I’m convinced is a twisted and perverted strain of OCD that renders me a slave to it (balance, that is). In my internal world, everything must end up with a zero sum. If I drink a glass of milk then run hot water into the empty cup I have no choice but to then run cold water into it. So they balance. When I’m driving along the highway and tap my right foot twice in time to the music, mimicking the beat of the bass drum perhaps, it is essential that I follow that up with two taps of the other foot. So things balance. I do this without thinking. It really all boils down to numbers more than some odd devotion to equilibrium. And I blame it on Mr. Webb.
Raymond “Spud” Webb was my music teacher in 6th grade. I was, at the time, living my dream of playing the drums in my school’s band. We percussionists had an entire period set aside for the seven or so of us to learn how to elevate beating the crap out of some variety of stretched hide into something resembling music. As with anything, we started with the fundamentals. Flams and paradiddles gave way to flam-taps and drum rolls that in turn led to wrist exercises that likewise led to learning to set and maintain the rhythm to such random skills as how to tune a tympani drum. Playing the drums was my life and my life was measured out in 4/4 time. Four beats a measure with a down-stroke every other beat. Everything assumed the shape of one measure and I would be damned if I didn’t get the proper number of beats in. The cracks in the sidewalk required either two or four steps in between each crack in order to sustain the rhythm of my life.
Mr. Webb encouraged us to take our drumsticks with us everywhere we went in order to practice the rudiments of our craft. In fact, we were told we could practice with our hands and/or fingers as long as our wrists were in the proper place (perfect technique would allow you to place a dime on the top of your wrist and have it never move) and we kept up a steady beat. This is how I came to be always drumming the pointer and middle fingers of my right hand on the pad of my right thumb (a habit that, 16 years later, I still can’t break). I was, in effect, always practicing drumming. On everything. And my practice wasn’t confined to my hands. I began counting my steps and seeing small distances in terms of beats and measures as opposed to feet and yards.
If I stepped out of the kitchen, with its linoleum floor, headed to the living room, with its rug, I had to make it from linoleum to rug in either four or eight steps. And of course, I absolutely had to start off on my right foot (I’m right-handed so I typically began a drum beat with my right arm) and end with my left. This was no big deal if Point A was actually only four steps from Point B. But this didn’t happen often. So on those occasions when I was about to step onto a new surface or off a surface, which in my mind was equal to beginning a new measure, I still had to complete the requisite number of beats/steps in my current “measure” before starting the next one. So if I was on step number three with my right foot and my next step would put my left foot as the first down-stroke of the new measure (which would have been incomprehensible to my young, obsessive, and neurotic brain) I would have to take a small stutter step to get that last, fourth beat in with my left foot. If there wasn’t room or time to get that last beat in, I would drag my left foot so the toe of my shoe would hit the floor, ostensibly “completing” that measure. This type of obsessive counting was like a news channel’s scrolling ticker in my head. It never stopped and regardless of what my conscious brain was concentrating on a there was still a part of me always counting my steps, hammering out that monotonous rhythm of a lifetime’s worth of walking.
Everything was counted out in multiples of four, just like in sheet music. Four steps, eight steps, sixteen steps…fourth notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes. Then, as if the counting and walking wasn’t compulsive enough, my overtaxed and underdeveloped brain decided to really try and drive me crazy by compelling me to throw in different drumming rudiments in my stride. For instance, one of the most basic fundamentals of drumming is what’s called a paradiddle. It’s a funny name for a simple thing. A paradiddle is simply two measures in 4/4 time with the beats progressing as: right hand left hand right hand right hand left hand right hand left hand left hand. It would look something like this:
R L R R L R L L
In our heads, as we practiced this and tried to become quicker, that’s what we said. “Right left right right. Left right left left.” Thus became my gait. Now, in addition to adhering to a complicated and irrational counting/walking pattern, I had to find a way to sneak in two steps consecutively to successfully complete the “measure.” Always of course, still beginning with the right foot and ending on the left. And, lest we forget, idle hands are the devil’s workshop. So as I was shambling along, tapping my feet, dragging my toes and half-stepping my way through middle school, I also had my hands to deal with.
As we all know from various science, anatomy, biology and/or anthropological classes, it is the Homo sapiens’ opposable thumbs that set us apart as well as make us evolutionarily superior to the lesser primates. And while our thumbs are indeed great, all that gripping, grasping, squeezing, prehensile goodness simply wouldn’t be possible without the other fingers. And how many fingers are on each hand excluding our wonderfully opposable thumbs? Four. The same number as beats in a measure. Now things get really difficult.
As soon as my fanatical mind seized on this, as soon as I realized that every single time I touched something with all four fingers of either hand that I was, for all practical purposes, completing a whole measure in one fell swoop…..well, it became too much. Now, if I, for example, let my arms fall to my sides and my right hand’s four non-thumb phalanges touched my right thigh, I was compelled to then touch my left thigh with the four fingers on my left hand. And since I was obsessed with this ideal of balance framed within the context of the number four, I was then further required to repeat the process. So I was hitting each thigh twice with four fingers each time in order to obey the laws of my obsession. Four strikes of four fingers. As you can imagine, this could quickly degenerate into a never ending cycle akin to the stereotypical stoner conundrum of there being a whole universe in one fingernail with a whole universe in that fingernail and on and on. What if my four beats of four fingers in each beat was simply one beat in a larger rhythm and on and on into infinity?
Eventually, everything I did was counted and made to conform. If my upper lip was dry and I stuck out my tongue to moisten it, I would immediately have to then touch my bottom lip, then upper again then bottom again. Up down up down. Right left right left. One two three four. When the corner of my right eye itched I scratched it four times with my right pointer finger then scratched the corner of my left eye four times with my left pointer finger. Four four four four. Balance balance balance balance. Every tiny movement and tic fell into this pattern. It soon became too exhausting to keep up. So I did what any young adolescent would do. I rebelled.
I reasoned that if the number four represented symmetry, balance and equilibrium, then I should take up with a set of numbers that stood for chaos, un-evenness and disorder. Naturally, I’m talking about prime numbers. Prime numbers are those numbers that can only be divided between themselves and one. Five is a prime number, as is seven, eleven, seventeen and nineteen and (literally!) countless others. Much like a junkie kicks heroin only to get addicted to methadone, prime numbers became my new obsession.
My new obsession at least was kind enough to restrict itself, for the most part, to my hands. The goal now was to, in whatever way, tap out a prime number with my fingers. For example: now when my right hand dropped to my side and my four fingers hit my thigh, I could continue alternating four fingers on each thigh, say, seven times. So if I tapped four fingers on each thigh seven times, still adhering to the right left right left policy, I would get a total of 28 “beats.” All I had to do now was tap one finger on whatever hand’s turn it was to get the 29th beat. 29 is a prime number. Mission accomplished. The more astute among you may realize that, in this example anyway, that I still came out, in a sense, with a sum of eight. Seven taps of four fingers each plus the one finger tap does equal eight. But this is just coincidence. I could have just as easily used an example of touching all five fingers of both hands together 10 times. Five fingers tapped 10 times is 50. With both hands tapping it is 100 then add the extra tap and you get a total of 101. 101 is a prime number. That, too, would have been coincidental and irrelevant. The important thing was that I was refuting the idea of balance that had so consumed me. The possibilities were, and remain, endless. If both hands fell to my side simultaneously (making a total of 10), all I needed was one tap from any finger to get a total of 11 (a prime number).
Much like my earlier obsession, this one got worse and worse. At one point I had memorized all the primes up to 101. If I scratched my arm with three fingers, I was obligated to then do something using five fingers, then seven, then eleven, and on and on. Then my feet got involved. I was soon counting out prime numbers on both hands as well as my feet. Walking now would instinctually involve counting out six steps (six steps multiplied by five toes equals 30) then tapping the very point of either foot to get that last tap in to arrive at 31. All of this was happening while my hands were likewise a furious blur of prime number counting. I remember passing the time in the car on family vacations by counting 101 of the dotted lines on the interstate. Then doing it again.
While I wish there was some moral, or new twist, or heck, even some resolution to this story, there isn’t. I’m 28 years old now (here I can’t help but note that next year I will be 29…a prime number), way more than a decade removed from sixth grade and Beginner Band, and I’m still tallying up prime numbers on my hands and feet. It’s mostly an unconscious act these days. I’m aware of the fact that I’m doing it, but by now my fingers, hands, and feet know the motions so well I don’t even have to count.
Damn you, Mr. Webb. A pox be unto you and your family; may similar compulsions rain down upon your offspring for generations to come.
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