How many hands to show your age?

Today is my youngest grandson’s (Xavier) 6th birthday. He can no longer show his age using fingers of just one hand (isn’t it fun watching a 3-year-old trying to get only 3 fingers up?). Once you get to age 16, you just can’t show your age in fingers… until you reach another milestone at age 20. Then it goes back and forth for a long time… both hands then three hands, until you get to 56; then it’s never again possible with two hands. Once you get to 66, four hands are needed.

We wise adults learn an alternative, though… using both hands for each digit. That works great until 100, then 3 hands are again needed. By that time, though, we expect those around us to remember how old we are, and not ask.

We could teach our children about the quinary number system (base 5, having only digits 1 through 5), which would coincide with use of our fingers. In fact, most of us are used to using quinary without realizing it; the old practice of noting counts with vertical marks and then crossing over the 4th with a diagonal line… and starting another group of 5.

Ain’t math fun?