I hosted a game night at my home last Friday, and seven of us played Chrononauts and Cosmic Coasters. Without delving into the rules of Chrononauts, oneof the primary rules is that if there are thirteen paradoxes on the board, the game ends and everyone loses, so every so often, someone would count the paradoxes to see if we were getting dangerously close.

Okay, audience participation exercise: Recite out loud, (under your breath if you're at work, louder if you're not, or you just don't care):

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P

Okay, now how many of you fell into 'alphabet singsong', not just monotonically reciting the letters, but singing the song that ends with 'now I know my A-B-Cs, next time won't you sing with me"?

I'm not sure which is more interesting, that we do that at all, or that we only do it with letters. The funny thing about Friday was that we started doing it with numbers, counting the counting song from Sesame Street:

'one-two-three four-five six-se-ven-eight nine-ten e-le-ven-twelve!

Weird stuff, because now I can't count without reverting to 'street'.

And why was it always twelve?