language: counting

I thought 100 was the biggest number, but i saw the numbers 112, 156 in different places (like in magazines and whatnot), but it never registered that they were actual numbers. i thought that they were special and i would never have to use them.

However, when i learned that there _were_ numbers that i could use that were above 100, i would count like this: 1, 2, 3....56, 57.... 98, 99, 100, 101... 108, 109, 200, 201, 202... 208, 209, 300, and on up to 500. I never went past 500.

I could never figure out why I didn't say 112 then... duh!

I thought "dozen" was a gigantic number, much bigger than a thousand or a million. My teacher got very confused when I told her that there must be a dozen atoms on the eraser of my pencil if there were millions on the tip.

I also have the habit of associating numbers with colours (see: Katy). 3 is yellow, 4 is orange, 5 is red, 6 is purple, 7 is grey. I'm not sure about the others.

this isn't a belief, really - just the way it has always been for me ......when I visualize numbers, they are 3-dimensional and have specific colors: 5; is red; 6 is blue; 3 is yellow; 4 is brown; 2 is gray; 8 is pink; 9 is very pale gray and 1 and 10 are white; 11 is also a light gray...............after that color doesn't bear any relation to numbers for me.

I used to (and still sort of do) always assume some numbers were more *special* than others. namely 5, 2, and 50.

i also remember multiplication in strange ways, rather than just memorizing or counting each time) because i think of the relationship two numbers have with each other, such as : 6 and 7 are unusual numbers, so multiplying them together creates a regular numbe:42

When I was really little, I used to imagine numbers had personalities. 1 was a guy and he was dating 2. 3 was jealous of 1. 4 and 5 were always arguing. 6 was always confused. 7 and 8 looked on with bemused disinterest. 9 was always trying to get 0 to lose some weight. 1 and 0 were buddies and were always hanging out with each other when 1 wasn't being romantic with 2.

When I was in Kindergarten, I was wholly and completely convinced that thirty was the highest number. NO ONE got in the way of that no matter what they said, no matter how smart I believed they were. Thirty was the highest number in the world, a big intimidating, staggering number. I used to be very, very mad at my teachers who told me otherwise. I screamed at one of them at the top of my lungs (possibly more, I only remember one in particular). My friends back then even knew. They would say "well there's forty and fifty and sixty ...", and, let's make a long story short - they weren't my friends much longer.

when my little cousin was 4, she was able to count until 9 in english. She said "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eightnine..." she thought eightnine was a whole number.

I used to believe…

for as long as I can remember, I've counted the number of letters in words. I think it's because my grandmother taught me to do crosswords at a very early age.

And so, I firmly believed that it was much better to be a woman than a man, because 'man' was only half of a 'human', whilst 'woman' had the full complement of letters.

I still try to convince people to follow this viewpoint...

Thanks to a vividly pictured counting book, I thought the numbers 0-9 were either male or female and had personalities. I came to dislike some of the numbers they pictured scowling. I'm not sure but I think this contributed to my lifelong hatred of math.

I used to believe that words and phrases could be "good" or "bad". The determining factor was the number of characters comprising the word or words in question. If a word or phrase contained an even number of characters then it was "good", and if it contained an odd number of characters it was "bad." I constantly counted the letters in people's names and the names of stores, cars, and anything else that I saw. Sometimes I would find myself during conversation spelling out some of the words used and counting the letters in my head. Now at 26, I still have an awful habit of counting letters.

I thought 1000 was the highest number invented.

It seems I'm not the only person to have assigned genders to the numbers. I took it a step further though, and imagined them as members in a family. For me, 1 is male, 2 is female, but they are also the little brother and sister, and don't get along. 4 is male and the "cool-guy" teenager who doesn't say much. 5 and 6 are husband and wife, with 6 wearing the pants in the family because she is bigger. 8 and 9 are the old aunts who never got married so they live together and have a bunch of cats (Like Patty and Selma from "The Simpsons"). 10 is the grandpa (Six's dad) who tries to keep everyone under control but mostly just shakes is head and mumbles alot. After ten, we get talking about the extended family... Don't get me started.

Soon after starting school 3 years ago, my friend's little girl came home upset because she couldn't read as well as some of the kids in her class, even though her counting was really good.

My friend comforted her by comparing her to me - saying "Auntie C can read and write, but she can't count to 100 like you can"

Her reading is much better now, but she still believes that I can't count without using my fingers and toes...

For some reason I always associated numbers with different shades of light and dark. For example numbers 1-5 are kind of dark and 6,7,8,9,are light numbers. The further you go down the line they gradually get lighter and darker. I have no idea where I got this but till this day, I still see numbers that way.

I used to believe that several meant seven. This was because the first time I remember anyone saying it it was grandma, who told me that there were several planes in the sky - coincidentally there happened to be seven and I thought the words menat the same thing.