Seven Eighths

An exercise in nonfiction as something semi-poetic....

One

One eighth in music is a semiquaver.  I always thought that was a fun word; as your intervals get smaller, the words get longer: demisemiquaver is half an eighth, and a hemidemisemiquaver is half that again.

Two

Two eighths is a quarter. Asking random strangers for one on the subway has at times not ended well.

Three

Three eighths is a number you're most likely to hear in the context of hat size... though some of us are a couple of eighths larger.

Four

Four eighths is a half.  This post marks halfway to my WNFiN goal for the month.

Five

Five is about how old I was when I first noticed that stock quotes used to come in numbers like 43 5/8 dollars per share; it was an artifact of manual floor-trading via hand signals.

Six

Six eighths, or three-fourths, is roughly the fraction of Americans whose lives don't really require major economic upheaval.

Seven

As in, seven-eighths.  This miserable year is seven-eighths over.