Thursday, 1/10

I remember what the numbers mean.

As you may recall from yesterday, I came across a series of numbers that I had written down when putting together U.P.-oriented questions for both my radio “What's Up, U.P.” contest and for “High School Bowl”. Those numbers?

Delta 81.8

Menominee 81.7

Marquette 81.5

Luce 81

Alger 80.9

Baraga 80.7

And so on. I had also written the words “longest” and “shortest” on them, indicating that I had asked questions about which county had the longest and which county had the shortest of whatever those numbers indicated. I just had no idea what those numbers meant. I spent all day yesterday trying to figure out it, and even wasted a little time last night going through notes making sure I hadn't missed anything.

Then it came to me, like many great ideas, in the middle of the night last night.

I'm guessing it was around 3 am or so, which is a great title for a Matchbox 20 song but a horrid time for a human being to shoot out of bed and realize that the numbers running around his head for the past 36 hours were, indeed, the average life expectancy for residents in each Upper Michigan county.

I probably took two or three years off of my life just by figuring that out at 3 am.

8-)

I don't know exactly HOW my brain figured that out in the middle of a deep sleep, but brains often do strange things at that hour of the morning. So when I woke up this morning I checked just to make sure, and yup—those numbers from yesterday are indeed the average life expectancy of U.P. citizens. As to why people living in Delta & Menominee Counties live a few months longer, on average, than other residents, I have no idea. Maybe it's the fact that they're usually warmer than everyone else.

I just don't know.

Of course, now that I've opened THAT can of worms, I can see my brain waking me at up at 3 tomorrow morning with a theory as to why residents in Delta and Menominee Counties live a few weeks longer than everyone else in the U.P. Because, apparently, that seems to be how my brain works now.

(jim@wmqt.com), happy to know what the numbers meant but willing to wait, at least next time, until dawn to find out about them.