In Love with 3’s
The Source
I think I may have an emotional attachment to the number 3. Child psychologists say that people with really good recall can remember even their earliest birthdays, but only to the age of four. Since I’d rather forget all birthdays it’s comforting to know that 3 is the age for which I have an excuse. I spent over three decades teaching in a very pleasant school with the tertiary name of Triopia, thusly named for the three tiny communities who were good enough to consolidate and send their children our way. Three seemed to be a good number for coming together as school districts. Recent attempts to make that four or five have not fared as well. I had three favorite teachers at I.C….Charlie Frank, Don Eldred, and Ethyl Seybold. I’d like to say I graduated in three years, but in my case I was fortunate to escape in four. Being a bachelor, I’m often the third wheel at parties, banquets, wiener roasts and weddings. Other than weddings, this works out comfortably for all of us. I used to go rabbit hunting with my Cousin Lyndle. He’d usually murder his hare with his first shot, my brother would splatter the little cottontail with a couple, but I’d always need three. Of course, by the time you shoot at a rabbit three times he gets the idea that you may mean him harm and he’s long gone. I was a favorite of the Sunday bunnies. I currently work as an entertainer on a paddlewheel riverboat and there are three of us whose job it is to play the music, tell the stories, tend the bar, and see to the needs of our guests. Often one our trio is off doing another gig and can’t make the excursion, leaving two of us to do double shows each day for sometimes five days while trying to make up for our missing brother. Two is hard. I like three. One of my recent joys has been the teaming up with a young Routt student named Brock Gwaltney to tickle the musical keyboards around the state. The kid is good and I pretty much try not to embarrass myself. The only downside to our duo is that we usually share the same keyboard simultaneously and we are subject to whatever piano the sponsoring organization provides. Of course a full-sized keyboard is a delight, but there have been times when we arrive at a gig only to find that they’ve dragged Grandma’s toy piano off the last garage sale. Brock and I need a bare (and painful) minimum of three octaves. Less than that and we simply hum loudly. I dated three girls in high school and found out the hard way that if you date three young ladies you should do this at separate times. I earned three athletic jacket letters in high school: one for basketball, one for track, and one for dating three girls. I have three jobs: the boat, Lincoln Land, and doing a bit of writing. No matter which way you approach my house, I’m the third one on the block. I read that three good friendships are all that person can effectively maintain. Again recalling my high school dating experience, I’d lower that to 2. I always work with two computer screens at once, and now think I need three. The dimensions of my desk have vetoed this idea. My grandpa always told us that if we’d eat more than three fried chicken legs at once we’d founder and die. Illogical as that may sound, I always stop at two. My mother’s favorite number was fourteen. Whenever she’d have to pull a number out of thin air, it’d be “14.” “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you fourteen times… put your dirty clothes in the washing machine, not on the floor!” “I must have seen that show fourteen times!” Sometimes she’d tack on a few zeros for effect: “I have fourteen million things to do today!” Dad used smaller numbers: “I’m only going to tell you this once.” And he did. But three makes me happy. If three is the number of birthdays celebrated by this upbeat little newspaper, then we should all be happy as well.