Ode to the Number 12

Why spare a rarity like the English Z for a word like 'dozen'? Because in French such things are bought with dimes, and just as a baker's dozen signifies safety against short shrift, a dozen itself is an earthly pile of plentitude. Yes, you and your bonne copine could put down six or seven of those things--eight or even ten on an exceptionally nice day or a picnic that spans meals--but there's no way you're eating a solid dozen. No chance of it. Not to say you won't enjoy a dozen--it's good to have more than crumbs in one's basket on the homeward swing. And that's the beauty of a dozen. It fits the natural notion of more than you need--a notion, naturally, that we all need more than we know.

But that's not the beauty of twelve. Twelve is a construct of round, bulging buns in two neat rows of three, two high, not unlike how plump cells make a happy creature. There may be frosting. On the atomic side, while it has no Z's, twelve is what's left when you take 'one' from 'two' and 'eleven', like a prudent pâtissier—as Lewis Carroll observed. Like many numbers, however, it has a numeric soul. Never mind that the moon makes its happily padded twelve trips 'round the earth each year, unless the generous revisitation of a full moon is your idea of a-bun-dance. Attend instead to the dance of the hours, twice daily, splitting a sundial in pretty wedges that could take any size. Attend to the inches in a ruler that could have any length. Attend to the night sky's most fecund plane that might find cogence in any division. Is there a reason things break duodenarily? Surely so--it's because when there are things to break and breaking to be done, there's sameness and diversity, for things are only things if there's a common thread, and diversity's the only breaker there is, deep down.

What do I mean? Why twelve? Look--this world's a box, even if we try to unlid it, and a box has dimension--three, to speak truly. What kind of dimension's a flat one? None to speak of. So take two as a minimum measurement, and now let me ask what kind of a box eight things comprise? Truly? Eight cosmic buns in a cube is a pretty thought, but it's not real. Where do you build off from? How can you add to this platinum ratio without ruination? Eight is a stone you put in a drawer, but twelve is reality. It's the next box bigger, the first whose dimensions aren't all the same. But look at it. Two... times two... times three. Sameness. Diversity. It's the very first number with both in its factors, and no wonder it's abundant. Superabundant, even, as its factors outdo its frame more than any number before it. And sublime--the only other sublime number is 76 digits long and never comes to brunch, and do you think they invent mathematical adjectives for just anybody?

Twelve is the meat of divisibility. Why are five and seven strange to the eyes of some? Because, small as they are, they don't divide twelve. How popular must you be before strangeness is defined by its distance from you? (No worries, devoted dozen--they're your children by addition.) No wonder sons and daughters come in twelves, and dozens give rise to grosses, and grosses to great grosses, as warm to industry as the grands and greats of the family tree.

So why not put twelve numbers on a clock or buttons on a phone, hang twelve names on your sun god or send twelve men to the moon? Why not satisfy yourself with twelve tribes, twelve jurors or twelve cranial nerves? If you're on your way up, you'd have to go out of your way not to hit twelve, so why not give it a name of its own, relax over muffins and doughnuts, and enjoy the full package? Hi, Noon. It's grand to live in a world where the box is always full.