A 'Seeing Numbers' Story

This story is fiction based on many questions we receive about seeing certain numbers all the time.

It was interesting, at first. Fun.

I looked at the clock. It was 11:08. It exactly matched my birthday. "Wow!", I thought, "that's cool."

Kinda spooky. But I shrugged it off.

The next day, I remembered seeing my birthday on the clock. It was now already noon and I thought, "Yes, it must have been just chance. A coincidence. Because I didn't see it again."

That evening I stayed up late watching a video. The video got done at exactly 11:08.

(We have 12-hour clocks here, AM and PM, not 24-hour clocks.)

"Funny world," I thought. And tried to shrug it off. But it still bothered me a bit that I would see my birthday on the clock like that.

It happened again — my birthday on the clock. It happened several times and always before noon. It really started to bother me. Why is this happening?

I don't usually stay up late enough to see it at night, as I did watching that video I mentioned earlier.

But one time I did.

My girlfriend came over and we got to talking. As she got up, ready to head home, she remarked that it got kinda late.

"It's 11:08 already!" she said.

It about knocked the breath out of me. When I got control of myself, I told her that I've been seeing that time off and on and it's bothersome because it's my birthday.

"Oh, yes," she said. "That is your birthday. I hadn't realized it."

After that night, I saw 11:08 every day, not just intermittently. And my girlfriend started seeing 11:08 every day, too. Now, she's also seeing her own birthday.

And I'm seeing her birthday. Every day, just like I see mine — I look at the clock and there it is.

It's making me crazy.

Is somebody trying to tell us something? Is it an indication of bad luck?

My response to seeing numbers all the time questions generally presents this idea:

A person sees many numbers during the course of a day. Usually, none of them are remembered. But sometimes one is.

When a number is remembered as being seen, the number generally has personal meaning to the person, or a special significance, sufficient to remark to themself something about the number or otherwise note its uniqueness.

That remark or notice makes it highly likely that the person will remember seeing the number.

(Sometimes, a person remembers seeing numbers with unusual construction — like consecutive or repeating digits. But usually the number being remembered is one with personal meaning or special significance.)

If that was all there was to it, the person would likely notice the number less and less as time goes on.

But that's not human nature. We seem to want answers and meanings for everything.

So what happens? The person invests emotional significance in the number by asking if it means something. It is a mystery and the person is compelled to solve it.

That need to find out is what makes it ever more likely that the person will see that number more and more often — until the number is noticed and remembered every time it is in their environment in a position to be seen.

Of course, the reason for seeing certain numbers is because the numbers have prior meaning or significance — before they are now being seen and remembered. If that were not so, the number is unlikely to be remembered as remarkable or notable among all the other numbers a person sees.

But when a person does not know that fact, they have a mystery to solve.