A fascination with numbers

When I was younger I liked to invent new ways of writing which no one could understand such as, inventing a new alphabet with different symbols. I would practice on and on writing and reading stuff, never mind that no one was going to read it anyway. Numbers were not really a big part of this experimental stage of my life. The first time I really thought of numbers as things which could be worth thinking about was when I was introduced to the Special Llave of the Jai Alai which is a pelota game originating in the Basque region of Spain. The players are called pelotaris and they are wonderful to watch when they do almost acrobatic stunts when chasing after the ball and returning it after catching it in his Cesta which is like a basket made from wicker and strapped to his arm. They would climb the walls of the court or drop to the floor and do all kinds of seemingly dancelike moves in catching the ball and bouncing it off the front wall of the Cancha.

The special llave consists of three numbers representing the numbers worn by the winner of the game, the second placer and the third placer. This would constitute a winning combination. People were crazy about Jai Alai and betting on the numbers. My first introduction into this seemingly arcane business was through the comics section of the daily newspapers. Ostensibly, coded messages would be placed in any of the comics and one has to find this message and decipher it which fell right into my alley so to speak. Now please understand it had been a while since I immersed myself in my little world of ciphers and secret codes so, you might say I was a little rusty but, I plunged right into it with great gusto.