The Number Nobody Wanted

Happy New Year!

This year I continued my tradition of volunteering at my running club’s new year’s 5K. The organizers schedule the race to begin at the humane hour of 10:00 AM, to allow late-night revelers to straggle to the starting line.

One of the benefits of going to the first race of the year is that members receive the bib that they use in club races throughout the year. The club reserves numbers 10 through 100 for runners who meet certain criteria. Runners must do one of the following: (1) volunteer for five or more races, (2) contribute 20 or more volunteer hours to the club, or (3) donate $100 to the club. Any member who satisfies one of the requirements gets to choose a number and have his or her name embossed on the bib. I confess that I’ve never satisfied any of those requirements, so I have never received a number lower than 100. Since I have volunteered at the new year’s day race for the last few years, however, I’ve always received low numbers (104, 105, and 103).

I went to the check-in desk to get my bib for the year. The woman working at the desk offered me number 37. I told her that I hadn’t qualified to receive a low number because I hadn’t fulfilled any of the requirements. She said that was all right, because she was now distributing the reserved numbers that nobody selected. So, I got 37.

I guess 37 did not hold any special attraction for other club members. I remembered, however, that the number does hold some significance in the Star Trek universe. The first episode of the second season of Star Trek Voyager is entitled “The 37’s.” In the episode, Voyager visits a planet that is populated by the descended of humans taken from Earth in the 1930s. These humans were taken by a race called the Briori and forced to work as slaves. They eventually rebelled and defeated their captors. Eight humans remained in suspended animation. Their descendants dubbed them “the 37s” for the year in which they were abducted. Captain Janeway “defrosts” the 37s and one of them turns out to be Amelia Earhart. Captain Janeway visits the civilization that the humans have built on the planet and offers the crew the choice of joining their fellow humans on the planet or remaining with Voyager on its lonely quest home. She asks that any crew member who wants to stay behind assemble in the cargo bay. In this scene, Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay walk to the cargo bay to see who has decided to stay.