I can't believe how many other people used to associate personalities with numbers! I thought I was the only one!
When I was little I had colourful fridge magnets in the shape of the numbers. I made up all these stories about them.
1 was red. He was a baddie, though not as bad as 9.
6 was pink and 7 was purple. They were married, or girlfriend and boyfriend or something, and 9 was always trying to kill them for some reason. 1 didn't want to kill them but he didn't like them.
8 was a friend of 7 & 6. He would always be helpful, though without actually doing anything.
I also had magnets in the shapes of plus and minus signs etc. The long division sign was always a cliff that 1 or 9 would push 7 and 6 off.
I also always liked even numbers better than odd numbers, because with even numbers everybody has a friend and with odd numbers someone's always left out.
Also 8 is a better number than 6 because, although they are both even, if you halve 6 you get an odd number and if you halve 8 you get an even number.
A childhood belief about counting

others believed things like this
- I used to believe that numbers had gender, that the odd numbers were boys and even numbers were girls. — Evelyn
- I used to believe that after the number "ten" came the numbers "tendy-one, tendy-two..." etc.Anon
- i used to belive that 1 to 10 were the only numbers and all others were made up.....— Eric
- I used to be terrified of the numbers 18 and 19. I think I thought that when you turned 18 or 19, you die.— Emmy
- Numbers went up to 100 then restarted at zero.Anon
- The highest of all numbers was "a finnety."— Becky