31 Today

Guest post by Cindylu:

I’m jealous of Rio. Today, he gets to say he’s 31. I’m counting down the days until I can say that. Yeah, I know I’m not your average woman.

I’m obsessed with the number 31. I take photos of it when I see it randomly on a bus or sign. I make a point of noting it as a hash tag on my Twitter feed when something is #31ftw (for the win, e.g., my favorite baseball player Andre Ethier hitting 31 home runs in 2009) or #31fail (e.g., Justice Sonia Sotomayor getting 31 nay votes in her Senate confirmation). My friends and family don’t get it, but they still send me photos when they spot a 31.

The truth? I don’t really get it either. My affinity began late in high school. That was when friends started teasing me about my many crushes and I eanred the nickname “31 Flavors.” I didn’t mind it, after all, I was born on the 31st of August. Soon, the nickname became part of my first email address.

All the photos? That didn’t begin until I bought a digital camera. I went out to lunch with my ex-roommate at a diner. We ordered our food and the cashier gave us a number for our table. I had to take a picture.

Soon, I was spotting it around school, LA, in my travels and so on. I made more pictures.

I just kept taking pictures, but for the first time I really stopped to think about what 31 means and why it’s awesome. Some reasons why:

The best months — January, March, May, July, August, October and December — have 31 days.
Some of the best days of the year are on the 31st (César Chávez Day, Halloween, NYE, my birthday).
It’s a prime number, a self number and all kinds of other cool math stuff I don’t really understand.
California was the 31st state admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850.
In Lotería, the 31 card depicts las jaras, or the arrows. (I think this is pretty cool considering my name Cynthia is one of the names of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, forest, hills and moon.
Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors of ice cream. Yum.
In the periodic table of elements, Gallium has the atomic number 31. It’s primarily used in semiconductors.
If you inverse 31, it makes 13, which might not be so popular in Northern California, but is more liked in LA.
If you add the digits of 31, you get 4. There’s lot of cool things about 4, like the 4 elements, 4 directions, Cuatro Caminos from Café Tacuba y más.
Doctor Who just ended it’s 31st season.
Thirty-one rhymes with “flirty one” and “dirty one” making for a particularly sexy year.
If you subtract 31 from 100 you get 69. I won’t espouse on that one because I’m an adult.