#33 Numerology

33

Uncharted territory. The age Eric never got to see. He had less than a month to go in his 32nd year when his story ended. Or at least he stopped being the protagonist. I hope I’m still moving his story forward.

33 is also the atomic number of arsenic. I remember watching the movie “Arsenic and Old Lace” with Eric in black and white. If you haven’t seen it, you should, it’s a classic. And because my Mom loves it so much and rented it from the library every time Eric or I stayed home sick from school, I’ll also recommend another black and white film, “Some Like it Hot”.

If you use the Newtonian temperature scale, 33 is the temperature needed to boil water. This may explain Eric’s failures at Fettuccine alfredo. Knowing him, he was using this scale and found his thermometers inaccurate.

Eric and I practiced different religions. You may have noticed in past blogs that he celebrated Christmas with his girlfriend and Chanukah with his family. I’ll probably get into that in another blog, when I get up the courage, but for now, 33 has important symbolism in both religions. Jesus died at age 33 and performed 33 miracles. 33 is the numerical equivalent of the Star of David and Amen.

A 33 is a long playing record. Eric certainly didn’t get to play for nearly long enough.

33 is the number of Larry Bird’s Celtics jersey. This would mean nothing to Eric; I’m just throwing a bone to my husband, a huge fan of both the Celtics and Larry Bird.

33 years is considered the coming of age of a hobbit in J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” a book and movie that Eric loved.

It is also the international pre-fix for France, a country Eric loved.

Eric was not Jesus, or Larry Bird, or a hobbit. But he was undeniably an amazing human being. And all humans have 33 vertebrae in their spines.

He may not have gotten to see his 33rd year, but he certainly got to experience the number 33. I’m sure he knew that 33 is the eighth distinct semiprime comprising the prime factors (3 • 11). Its aliquot sum is 15; itself a discrete semiprime (3 • 5) in the following Aliquot sequence 33,15,9,4,3,1,0. (Note 33 is the 8th composite number to descend into the prime number 3, the others outside of this sequence being 30,26,16,12) Since 33 is a semiprime with both its prime factors being Gaussian primes, 33 is a Blum integer.

And even if he didn’t know that, I’m sure he would have liked to know that Messier object 33 is in the constellation Triangulum otherwise known as the Triangulum Galaxy.

Halfway through what would have been Eric’s 33rd year, I learned that according to Egyptian Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, the dwellers of Heaven will exist eternally in a state of being age 33. Maybe he didn’t miss it after all.


(Thanks to Wikipedia for the information on the number 33)