Numerical Wonders: Embrace the Excitement of 2025!

It all revolves around the digits. Who doesn’t relish a rendezvous with a wonderful number? Was your rendezvous a delightful number? That’s what arrives next week with New Year’s Day, invariably a 1-1.

Christmas Day presented a decent number, 12-25-24, yet an even better date will be 12-25-25.

On Christmas Day, we conversed with friends who were visiting, and they felt they had secured a fantastic date. They had managed to get Christmas bookings for his 65th birthday at The Gasparilla Inn and included the family. They had an amazing time at his 60th and desired something extraordinary for 65. They had even succeeded in booking a golf slot; he tried calling the reservation number several times and received a negative response, but ultimately secured a morning timeslot.

Determination can almost invariably alter our figures.

He was born on the 25th of December, as were a few others on this island. It’s a distinctive group, those born on December 25, as they share their birthday with the extraordinary one who transformed the course of history for billions, for all time.

We find ourselves in this “numbers” phase because The Gasparilla Inn, a major contributor to the economic cycle on the island, declared that it would fully open at 12 noon, on 12-12-24. The specification of a date, and number, made it unforgettable.

Add another few figures in $$ on the City Ledger. Dad will settle up when it’s time to head north.

Some cultures, as anthropologists remind us, are subservient to a mechanical or digital clock based on 12, and will assert that this concept of punctuality is a Western idea. That may hold some truth, but when the sun rises in a non-industrial region, you HAVE to arise, or you won’t get to eat. Naturally, that set of figures depends on 12 distinct numbers.

Reference the chapter and verse? That’s a number as well. We’ve got God encapsulated. In the Christian calendar, this publication day, Dec. 27, honors St. John the Evangelist, following the 26th, which commemorates St. Stephen. We humans numbered every part of the Bible. Some individuals generate those figures quickly. Certainly, our figures are known as Arabic numbers, yet we adopted the concept and initiated our Christian era at the year 0000, or, as most of us continue to refer to it Anno Domini, the year of our Lord, in the Gregorian calendar.

It is quite intriguing how much we all adore numbers, even as we no longer memorize many of them. Most of us can remember cherished phone numbers from family members and grandparents. Oh, how wonderful it would be if you could dial those numbers again and have someone we cherished answer the call?

Here, at the Beacon, we dwell in the realm of the 4-Digit Phone Book, where we preserve the tradition of the 964 exchange being something rather unique, even though many on the island have discarded land lines. (Please note that we are sold out of books until 2025.)

In 2024, we reported that Lumen, the parent company of our land line phone provider Century Link, moved beyond penny stock status, and is presently looking to separate its consumer lines. The profit figures for our traditional telephone service, originally known as United Telephone, then Sprint Florida, then Embarq, and finally Century Link, are no longer significant in an AI-driven world that primarily desires fiber optic cables. That’s reality, so frequently in our world. We are all a figure. The fundamentals of existence are a collection of financial terms.

In 2025, the figures might be increasing for our water, and the bridge as well. Storms can be costly.

Some of us like to believe we do not “gamble” with the numbers, yet that is not accurate. This editor remembers a sudden trip to the island on 01-01-00, which required a flight for the family on 12-31-99. That was the notorious Y2K, which ultimately became beneficial for the IT industry. If memory serves, they should have simply given us four digits for the year, instead of just two.

The wager that the world would not end awarded the family of four a $99 trip, in total, to Florida, on an empty aircraft since many believed they would all somehow plummet from the sky on Y2K. Naturally, nothing of the sort transpired. On 1-1-00, this editor’s family checked into the Innlet, where so many over the years have enjoyed other 1-1s. It wouldn’t have been as economical if it had been 1-1-2000.

The old phone number for the hotel was WO-42295. Even here, most do not recall that the earliest versions of telephone numbers were represented using letters. Currently, in the four-digit system, you can reach them at 4600 for the office and 4610 for the Outlet restaurant.

The aspects of our lives may now be governed by the binary 01s of computer coding. Anything written or electronic, even our magnificent artworks and structures, can be represented in a series of zeros and ones. Some are reluctant to accept that modern life is binary.

For all of us, may the number and year A.D. 2025 be a fortunate one for you, and an enhanced one for us all.

Garland Pollard is the editor of the Boca Beacon. Email letters and remarks to editor@bocabeacon.com.