Weird that the 17th of July is Yellow Pig Day but even weirder that two Princeton students in the 1960s decided a yellow pig should be the mascot of the prime number 17. The number 17 doesn’t make me think of a yellow pig or even that the first four prime numbers 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 add up to equal 17. For me, the only thing the number 17 conjures up is the time and place I was when I was 17.
When I was 17, I was at a school in Dobbs Ferry, outside of New York City, which was way too far from the cities of New York and Tokyo, where my parents lived. It’s what I remember first though I do also remember the dining tray toboggan slides in the dead of winter that got a few of us in trouble and my Irish Lit class that made me want to write. 17 was when I began to write, stirring in me a haiku in three verses I’d finish decades later:
Places I lived in
Growing up at seventeen
In me forever
Tokyo born New York
Then Singapore Les Charentes
Karuizawa
Dobbs Ferry here now
DC is in the future
Tucson then London
Happy Yellow Pig Day to all mathematicians and Happy Yellow Pig Day recalling where you were at 17!