Mine's thirty-three

A slightly chilly, blustery, rather boring day in the Middle-Sized City. Not much going on, not much planned for the weekend either. Don't want to be at work today. Don't want to be anywhere really, except maybe in front of the TV in sweats with a jar of Nutella hazelnut spread and a spoon. I leave the rest to your imagination and better judgment.

Suddenly, my cellphone vibrates. I've missed a call. An invitation for an event this evening. From the boyfriend (aka, the Artist) of a friend (aka, Fouchat). The phone message listens like so:

"Hey, we're going to Ball tonight and have an extra ticket. We wanted to know if you'd like to join us. at 8, but maybe we could meet for dinner before.

"OK, take care. Oh! Wait! Why don't you give us a call and let us know if you want to join us. My number's 7!"

Seven. Or, rather, 7. That's the number. The entire number.

Goodness, there's nothing better on a mentally dreary day than getting a message from the Anti-Linear-Thinker League. It made me laugh. Out loud. Several times throughout the day. Almost as much as the time when I played Scrabble with the Artist and Fouchat, and the Artist developed new rules for the game--"You have to spell a word, then use it in a sentence about George Bush," plus you could spell the word upside down, backwards, forwards, diagonally, wherever you could find the space. And, thankfully, you could use expletives and primal screams. It rocked my little binary world to its very foundation.

We scored the game by voting on a scale of 1 to 10 how good the sentence was. Somehow we all ended up with practically the same score, which make say a lot about how bad artists are a math or how good they are at social cohesion.

So today, whenever I thought about something negative--my weight, the impending winter, my car, my travel schedule for October and November, the geopolitical situation, my over-reliance on The Gap to meet my sartorial needs, nothing in the cupboard for dinner tonight but feeling too lazy and cheap to order take-out--I remembered "my number's 7!" and it made me guffaw. In the office. In the restroom. In the line at Subway waiting for a sandwich. In the street on my way home. And while typing this post.

Oh please, oh please, oh please, let this boyfriend of a friend run for office. I don't know if a healthcare bill would pass any sooner, but at least I'd feel constantly entertained and not perpetually aggrieved.

Plus we'd all win at Scrabble.