665, The Number Of The Feast

"Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." - Revelation 13:18

So, we're at DQ the other day celebrating Zach's graduation from elementary school with a big giant Midnight Truffle Blizzard for him (we usually make him get a small) and a more modest vanilla cone for me, when we inadvertently stepped right into the middle of a demonic situation.

Now, I've heard of superstitious people before, in fact I'm often surrounded by them in one capacity or another. People who change the course of their lives to avoid some situation or symbol that has been pre-determined to be "bad". People who have "signs" and care about the location of Mars at any given moment. You know. But I've never seen someone go to this embarrassing extreme to avoid a bad omen.

Our bill came to $6.66, which, when stripped of units and punctuation, is 666. This is the famed "Number of the Beast", a very bad omen supposedly...unless you are an 80's metal band or a low-budget horror film director, in which case it's pure gold.

The girl behind the counter looked at the register display with a kind of tense trepidation for a second and then pressed a button and apologetically removed a penny from my bill in order to avoid this most wicked of coincidences. I gave her a very incredulous look and rolled my eyes. At last she felt like she had to say something:

"Well, I don't REALLY believe in that kind of stuff, but I had to change it, I can't charge you this total."

But I think her willingness to risk her job giving me a spontaneous discount means she really does believe in "that kind of stuff". Why else would she do it? Certainly not for my benefit.

It's people like this that I just don't get. I mean, really? I can imagine a thousand years ago when Europe was firmly in the grip of the Dark Ages and superstition ran rampant, when people had no idea what caused the plagues and disasters of their time, before the discovery of germs and gravity and tectonic plates, some people may have fallen for the presumption that a number can be unlucky or evil, but this is the 21st century! Have all the illuminating scientific discoveries of the last ten centuries done nothing to dispel these old ignorant superstitions? The sad answer is no, like the word "disaster" itself (which is Greek for "bad star"), it lingers on well into the modern world of cause and effect.

Still, I'll never turn down a free penny!