What did Dactylonomy inspire?
noun; meaning "the practice of numbering or counting on the fingers .”
It’s a new school year and already my spirit feels broken. My last year in high school. My last chance to change things. To make them understand that I am something more that a human calculator.
------
I turn up my collar to the cold winds, the sky already darkening with the promise of winter. A street lamp flickers on and off with irregularity, and I can feel the urge building inside me.
“Just be normal.” I whisper.
“Just be normal.” my mother’s voice echoes in my head.
And the number being reaches for my hand. They place their palm up against mine and I feel the buzzing hum of the numbers coursing across their form. My hand is still twitching, generating incalculable strings of numbers, but then it stops. As though they had somehow absorbed the madness, my hand is free of the involuntary motions.
“PEACE. BE STILL. YOU ARE FOUND. WE COME.”
And then it cuts out. Everything stops. The numbers. The shape. They all fade and I am left standing beneath a flickering street light with my hand in mid-air, reaching for a figure I could have only imagined.
I look at my hands and they are still. I count to ten, try some simple calculations, but nothing happens. The tremors are gone. The curse is gone.
And now I wait. For the who, the what, and when they come.
Deep breath. Stay calm. Just be normal. Just be normal…
If only it was that easy. To just take in a few lungfuls of cool autumn air, and somehow make everything change. They’d all forget who I was. Forget the strangeness. Forget the gifts. I’d be a blank slate and could set the record straight.
“Just be normal.”
Those were the words mom told me at supper the night before. It’s easy to say when you aren’t the one standing outside school, already dreading the teachers even more than your fellow students.
They give me labels. “Genius.” “Savant.” “Mathematical.” And it’s all they can see. The bars they form around me, locking me in a cage of analytical thought. No one can hear me calling out for the world of language and literature. No one can understand that my way with numbers is not driven by passion or enjoyment, but floods my veins like a cold and calculating curse.
But I am known by so many other names too.
“Oy! Digits! Watch it!”
I mumble apologies knowing that was one of the kinder ones. It’s a pun, though I doubt they realize that. It isn’t just my imposed love of numbers but the incessant twitching of my fingers.
“Dactylonomy” they had called it. A sort of nervous compulsion triggered by some part of my brain. Like a visual representation of the numbers flashing by.
If only it was that easy. To just take in a few lungfuls of cool autumn air, and somehow make everything change. They’d all forget who I was. Forget the strangeness. Forget the gifts. I’d be a blank slate and could set the record straight.
“Just be normal.”
Those were the words mom told me at supper the night before. It’s easy to say when you aren’t the one standing outside school, already dreading the teachers even more than your fellow students.
They give me labels. “Genius.” “Savant.” “Mathematical.” And it’s all they can see. The bars they form around me, locking me in a cage of analytical thought. No one can hear me calling out for the world of language and literature. No one can understand that my way with numbers is not driven by passion or enjoyment, but floods my veins like a cold and calculating curse.
But I am known by so many other names too.
“Oy! Digits! Watch it!”
I mumble apologies knowing that was one of the kinder ones. It’s a pun, though I doubt they realize that. It isn’t just my imposed love of numbers but the incessant twitching of my fingers.
“Dactylonomy” they had called it. A sort of nervous compulsion triggered by some part of my brain. Like a visual representation of the numbers flashing by.
“Why can't you be like normal kids.” I knew it was what my parents had wondered. Why couldn’t I leave the house without counting fence posts or calculating angles? Why did my hand have to hang at my side, solving invisible equations, generating unending strings of numbers and tabulating the world around me.
It’s a new school year and already my spirit feels broken. My last year in high school. My last chance to change things. To make them understand that I am something more that a human calculator.
------
I turn up my collar to the cold winds, the sky already darkening with the promise of winter. A street lamp flickers on and off with irregularity, and I can feel the urge building inside me.
“Just be normal.” I whisper.
“Just be normal.” my mother’s voice echoes in my head.
I try to ignore it but my hands begin to twitch, counting the flickers, converting the signals. I know it has to be just random gibberish. It’s just a flickering street light, but then a letter, two, three, a word.
“D-I-G-I-T-S”
I stop. My fingers keep moving, keeping track of the signals, but my mind has stopped as the world falls out from under me.
Someone is communicating through the streetlight.
“D-I-G-I-T-S”
I stop. My fingers keep moving, keeping track of the signals, but my mind has stopped as the world falls out from under me.
Someone is communicating through the streetlight.
“No. It’s just a coincidence.” I think shaking my head.
But the numbers don’t stop.
“W-A-I-T”
And I’m frozen with fear. Perhaps it has finally gotten to me. The numbers I had so loathed have finally broken me and I am hallucinating. It’s all just a waking dream-
I lean back to steady myself on the light post. My world is spinning, yet the numbers keep flowing out to my hand, fingers rhythmically tapping on the metal post. They aren’t recording. They’re receiving. I close my eyes.
The messages keep coming.
“A-L-L-R-I-G-H-T”
“H-E-L-L-O”
And with each word, the letters aren’t so drawn out, but are becoming audible. I am hearing each phrase and slowly but surely, I am seeing the speaker.
Not clearly, not a person, but the shape of one. A mass of numbers and equations taking shape and form before me.
“IT HAS TAKEN SO LONG. HELLO. YOU ARE ALIVE. YOU ARE WELL.”
And I don’t know what is going on. There are tears rolling down my cheeks. Is this a seizure. Is this how it all ends.
“FEAR NOT. BE CALM. FRIEND.”
But the numbers don’t stop.
“W-A-I-T”
And I’m frozen with fear. Perhaps it has finally gotten to me. The numbers I had so loathed have finally broken me and I am hallucinating. It’s all just a waking dream-
I lean back to steady myself on the light post. My world is spinning, yet the numbers keep flowing out to my hand, fingers rhythmically tapping on the metal post. They aren’t recording. They’re receiving. I close my eyes.
The messages keep coming.
“A-L-L-R-I-G-H-T”
“H-E-L-L-O”
And with each word, the letters aren’t so drawn out, but are becoming audible. I am hearing each phrase and slowly but surely, I am seeing the speaker.
Not clearly, not a person, but the shape of one. A mass of numbers and equations taking shape and form before me.
“IT HAS TAKEN SO LONG. HELLO. YOU ARE ALIVE. YOU ARE WELL.”
And I don’t know what is going on. There are tears rolling down my cheeks. Is this a seizure. Is this how it all ends.
“FEAR NOT. BE CALM. FRIEND.”
And the number being reaches for my hand. They place their palm up against mine and I feel the buzzing hum of the numbers coursing across their form. My hand is still twitching, generating incalculable strings of numbers, but then it stops. As though they had somehow absorbed the madness, my hand is free of the involuntary motions.
“PEACE. BE STILL. YOU ARE FOUND. WE COME.”
And then it cuts out. Everything stops. The numbers. The shape. They all fade and I am left standing beneath a flickering street light with my hand in mid-air, reaching for a figure I could have only imagined.
I look at my hands and they are still. I count to ten, try some simple calculations, but nothing happens. The tremors are gone. The curse is gone.
And now I wait. For the who, the what, and when they come.
I fell quickly.
And quietly.
In the pause between two & three.
He shook his head and
Furrowed his brow.
And started over.
I guess I did too.
I watched the dactylonomy.
And wondered.
How entranced I could be.
With the deliberate holds.
And the way he mouthed each
One
Two
I don’t even know you
But I could watch you count
Three
Four
For hours
I don’t know you
But a part of me
Five
Six
Sort of loves
A part of you
Is this okay?
Kaitlyn Rak
OneTwoThreeFourFive -
My fingers tap rhythms against each other.
Nervousnervousnervous,
s t e a d y n o w,
nothing to be so nervous about.
How many syllables
are in that sentence?
How many are in this one?
Seven.
OneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSeven.
"How many are in this one?
How many are in this one?
How many are in this one?"
They repeat over and over,
an unrelenting melody.
Phrases refuse to vacate my brain
until I've counted them properly.
Why does this compulsion surface?
Why does it fade away?
How many syllables are in that sentence?
Six.
OneTwoThreeFourFiveSix -
Please.
This nervousness is killing me.
(Eight.
OneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEight.)
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