Numerology is not my thing. But a photo in the New York Times last week, of Joe Biden in his No. 30 high school football jersey, did prompt some ruminations regarding coincidence. The picture was from 1960, when Biden was a senior and, according to the accompanying article, an exceptional pass catcher for Archmere Academy, a Catholic school in Claymont, Delaware.
It so happens that, the following fall, I wore No. 30 on the freshman team at Alemany High, a Catholic school in the Los Angeles suburb of San Fernando. (I was an offensive lineman—at least until everyone surpassed me in height and weight the next year and I wound up playing quarterback. Not exceptionally.)
But there’s more. Biden’s team was undefeated in eight games the year of that snapshot. Mine, in the season when I was dressed in No. 30, also was 8-0.
No student of karma, I nevertheless should point out that Biden, on his way to becoming President-elect this month, had risen to the status of United States Senator by the minimum required age: 30. I meanwhile embarked on a half-century career in journalism, whose practitioners traditionally indicate the end of a story submitted for editing with the number 30 (separated by two hyphens).
Yes, and back in my high school days, my favorite member of the Los Angeles Dodgers was shortstop Maury Wills. No. 30. That was about the time the student/youth protest movement—and young people in general—were espousing the warning, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” I also could note parenthetically that, in that era, we whippersnappers were spending more than a little time listening to the terrific Beatles collection known as The White Album. Which consisted of 30 tracks. And not too long after came that delightful movie, Back to the Future, in which Marty McFly traveled 30 years back in time.
According to affinitynumerology.com, the number 30 “resonates with optimism….resonates with and supports creative expression and encourages it in others.”
That’s a welcome outlook for us citizens right about now, though I wouldn’t want to go overboard in declaring some divine or mystical connection at work.
What all this means is purely subjective and most likely inconsequential. Just as incongruous as reporting that the earliest written records of numerology—the study of numbers in one’s life—are said to have come from Babylon. I live in Babylon. But the one on Long Island, New York; not ancient Mesopotamia (now modern Iraq).
I’d have to count myself among the skeptics who argue that numbers have no occult significance and do not influence our lives; that numerology feels more like a superstition, a pseudo-science using numbers to supply the veneer of scientific authority.
But I do consider The Count a superstar among the Muppets. And one more happenstance related to this discussion: Joe Biden will be U.S. President No. 46. I was born in ’46. -30-