Numbers

Some people like numbers. They can do all sorts of mental gymnastics with numbers without realizing they are doing anything unusual. The numbers may be sports statistics for the past few decades, stock projections into the future, or the current populations of nearby towns and cities. I am married to such a person.

Some people like words. I am such a person. Numbers are useful, they have their place, yada yada. But I am much more drawn to the wonders of language. Being married to a numbers person is a good thing—I don’t particularly want to crunch our financial numbers beyond the basics (knowing how much money I have so that I don’t spend more than that, what is a good price for cantaloupe), but he loves all that. In return, I can give him lots of good book recommendations and help him edit anything he writes.

Our differences were apparent the afternoon we spent on hour and a half with a financial planner. The financial planner and my husband were speaking some common language that I barely could keep up with. A language, oddly enough, made up of numbers. “You should start a 529 plan to start saving for kids’ college,” or “You’ll just need a 1031 on that.” I nodded sagely, and my husband translated for me. And the F.P. was nice enough to accompany all the numbers in our packet with colorful pie charts. Two numbers were interesting enough to stay in my head: Our net worth, which is a positive number quite a bit over 0; and 2015, the year we will have two children in college.

The numbers I am more interested in are more like this: I have 2 books to read for the next 10 days. If I stay up until 12 each night, how many pages can I read? Or, I have a year’s worth of pictures to put into photo albums. If I used 17 rolls of film that had 24 pictures each, how many hours until I swear to sell my camera?