Our parents taught us to count almost from the time we could walk. Our grade school teachers pounded the times tables into our resistant heads. In high school, we struggled through the abstract landscape of algebra. Should we have been fortunate enough to tiptoe into a college calculus class, we became quite confused, and seriously questioned whether we had ventured too far into the alien world of mathematics.
As adults, however, we count and calculate, every day, every hour, almost every minute. Consider the number of times you check the time and calculate the minutes you must count down until the roast must be taken out of the oven or the kids must be picked up from soccer practice.
In fact, we have become obsessed with counting and tracking those counts. Calories and weight watcher points are favorites. Then, of course, we are tempted to plot pounds versus time until perhaps, the graph no longer shows a black diamond descending slope or even a gentle bunny slope but flattens out and horror of horrors begins to rise again toward a new record high.
On my personal home front, I'm becoming a little worried about my obsession with numbers. Even in my volunteer work, I count dead birds (SEANET program), live birds (Cornell Ebird program), and birds at the Wellfleet Audubon Sanctuary (project Feeder Watch). Birding labels me as a strange enough creature without all this counting.
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| Redpolls at the Audubon feeder (two of them) |
My thoughtful wife bought me a Fitbit for Christmas. You guessed it. I am now counting steps, miles walked and active minutes as they accumulate each day. I'm tired just from counting. I don't have any energy left for exercising. Where will this end? Do yourself a favor and don't start counting the number of things you count. You could become depressed about counting like me.
To comfort myself about this numerical dilemma, I'm counting the number of days until I can leave Massachusetts winter behind and head south for a few weeks. I'm hoping to leave numbers behind.
