Six-Seven (alternative title: Sorry ’bout all this, or: That Boy Ain’t All Here, Is He?)

Six-Seven (alternative title: Sorry ’bout all this, or: That Boy Ain’t All Here, Is He?)

QIC: Burns

Date: 12.17.25

PAX: Palin (EC), Greenspan (EC), Turnover (EC), Lamb Chop, Chisel, Moneyball, Drip, Frostbite, Burns (EC)

There’s something rotten with our world. And I don’t want to make light of all the very real and very terrible tragedies that are happening with greater frequency – I hold space for those and hope that you do, too. But in the mundane, the ordinary, and the regular a scourge on our eyes and ears has infiltrated and bloomed into at best an annoyance and at worst an egregious disruption of the peace and sanctity of the expected rules of engagement with our (and other’s) children. A simple mention of the number ‘six’ and in unison all of the arms of teens, pre-teens, children, and toddlers spring into anticipatory action, palms up and shoulder width apart, elbows flexed between 60-90 degrees and one hand held slightly higher than the other. God forbid you or someone in earshot of you follows up with the number seven – the response will be raucous. These sweet, innocent children whose brains are still developing and can’t control their actions succumb to the pervasive rot of collective action and all will begin to convulse, shouting “six-seven, six-seven” anywhere between 5-10 times (don’t even go there – I know you’re thinking it) and shuffling their arms up and down in some sort of semi-ritualistic yet uncontrolled and idiotic manner. I don’t understand it. I don’t think you, dear reader, understand it either. There are rumors that resemble something like an origin story of this fad, but if you ask a child to explain the “six-seven-ing” of their world to you they’ll just shrug their shoulders, lightly shuffle their hands up and down while giving you what was once a charming smile but now has an undertone of mischief, and walk away. And while all of this is happening, you are noticing that your once iron-clad grip on the future of your world has been lost forever. Your ability as a father, as a trusted adult, as a molder of young minds, and as a guide to the lost and broken – you don’t have it any more. In fact, even though you can’t place a finger on the exact moment it happened, you’re able to ballpark a timeframe in which things started to change, never to be the same again. It was six or seven months ago.

And I, as your humble correspondent, sought to get to the bottom of this problem. We can call it a problem, right? No use in calling it something it’s not. “Problem” might even undersell the situation, but I digress. I began digging into some of the institutions of our beloved town to see if there’s anything of historical significance that could lead us to find who’s in charge of this whole ordeal. Look to the past to understand your future, that sort of thing. What I found was troubling. I teased out some of the information in my preblast, and eight other curious minds showed up to see if my research would bear any fruit or if I, too, were being infected by the numerical disease. As a primer – it’s 6,677 feet around the perimeter of the park. The park is 46.7 acres in size. And so much more.

The morning began like many other Wednesdays – a light EC jog with Greenspan, Palin, and eventually Turnover. We completed two laps around the park to scope out the territory and look for any clues…nothing caught our eye. Yet.

Others joined as we circled back into the lot, and as the clock approached 0530 I began to issue welcoming fist bumps and declare us all fit for action. Core principles were dictated and the mission statement was presented, and so we began our exercises.

SSH x6 IC. SSH x7 IC. (I loved the looks of horror crossing the faces of those in the circle. This was a one-time thing in WoR but man was it worth it.) ISTs x10 IC, Whirlies x10 IC, Abe Vs x6 IC (or was it 7????), Jack Reachers x10 IC, Michael Phelps x10 IC. 

Did you know there are six streets that border Hanes Park? That’s pretty cool. We moseyed up to Sunset and took a right and began exploring. Turns out there are three staircases off of Sunset that enter the field below. Each of them have two rails. 2×3 = 6. But wait for this…it goes deeper. The average length of the rails on these staircases…21 feet. That’s 7 yards. What. Oh! Oh! Get this! The field itself happens to be 1.67 hectares. Are you freaking kidding me? To try and unearth any clues we went up and down each staircase and at the bottom and at the top we did 7 star jumps. 6 sets of 7 = 42 star jumps. Then we went up to the stop sign at Glade. Here’s the thing…I didn’t really expect to see all of the things I saw when doing my research. I kept talking to myself saying things like, “this is just a funny coincidence, right?” or, “there’s no way the Hanes family actually dedicated this public space all those years ago (1919) (which is 106 years ago) (which is two weeks away from being 107 years ago) (just saying) as some way to warn us about the downfall of humanity?” But on Glade street there are 7 signs that face traffic as you are heading West from the YMCA to Hawthorne Rd. And 6 of them have instructions for motorists. Things like “No Parking” or “Weight cannot exceed x on bridge” or “yield.” 6. of the 7. Signs. So in an attempt to uncover anything that might be hiding we called upon our friend Bonnie Blair to aid…at the 6 instructional signs we did 7 BBs and at the 7th non-instructional sign (Adopt-a-Stream) we did 6 BBs. Double count, of course. 6 sets of 7 & 1 of 6 = 48 Bonnie Blairs. Oof. Nothing yet had come to light about a possible connection between the Hanes family and the origins of the insidious trend, so we turned the corner on Hawthorne and lo and behold, a new clue! You won’t believe this. You can’t possibly believe what I’m about to say. But it’s true…go count for yourself. There are 126 sidewalk squares between Glade St and Northwest Blvd on the side of Hawthorne that borders the park. 126? What’s significant about that number? Oh I dunno…how about if you divide it by 3 you get 42 and 6×7 is 42??? WHAT? This had to be it. We had to be getting close. We moseyed along Hawthorne, stopping at every 3rd square on the sidewalk to do 1 squat for 42 total squats. My disappointment was mounting when we reached Northwest and nothing yet had been determined. I could begin to sense some doubt spreading among the pax – and I was beginning to doubt myself some, too. But I had some new information that might be just what we needed to blow the whole cover off this thing. Did you know that Northwest Blvd between Hawthorne & Reynolda is – are you sitting? you might want to sit down for this – 2/3rds of a kilometer long? 2/3rds! That’s .67! You can’t make this stuff up!!! I thought to myself, “What are we needing to crack this code? How can we make sure we aren’t missing anything?” and determined that some partner work was in order. We played “Catch Me If You Can” down the NW Blvd sidewalk, where one partner would slowly mosey towards Reynolda Rd while the other did 6 SSHs and 7 Merkins and then sprited to catch up. Partners would trade roles all the way down the street. When the six (what? the six? are you serious?) (it was me) caught up with the group I noticed Greenspan doing some weird sort of gyration and so I was encouraged that the pax hadn’t lost their exploratory spirit yet. That’s when I brought out what I thought was the Mecca of all clues. We were on Reynolda Rd, the shortest stretch of any street that borders the park. Yet it was packed with the most hidden-in-plain-sight kind of junk you’d ever imagined. There are six telephone poles on Reynolda before the curvy intersection where it bends left into Broad St and the West End Blvd veers to the right. Six poles? Probably just a coincidence. But when you realize that the lumber for those six poles likely came from a lumber yard near East Bend in Yadkin County and you connect the dots that the fastest way to get to East Bend in Yadkin County from Hanes Park is to drive up Reynolda Road until it turns into, yep, you guessed it, State Hwy 67??? That no longer can be a coincidence, right?? Mysterious forces are at play here!! Maybe this was the precious crown jewel of a clue to solving this puzzle! So we stopped at every pole and did 7 diamond merkins to see if all of a sudden a stone would come loose on one of the park entrance pillars or something. Alas, no such luck. 6 sets of 7 = 42 diamond merkins. By now I could tell that the pax were no longer expecting something magical to appear and grant us the glorious conclusion to our efforts that we sought. But I was determined to try one more thing. Maybe, just maybe, if we couldn’t coerce the answer from the environment we would have to hammer it out. Our collective brute force could overwhelm many an obstacle. Surely we could find the answer, or any answer, really, through a show of strength. The note about West End Blvd that would likely lead us in the right direction is that there are 13 residential properties that share a boundary with West End Blvd – that’s truly a mind-blowing number at this point because you’d expect it to be something like 20 properties or 9 properties or something that certainly would be the SUM OF SIX AND SEVEN. They’re hiding all the information in broad daylight, people. Wake up!!! At each house along the way back to Sunset we stopped and did American Hammers, starting at 13 (double count, of course) and reducing the total by one until we did one final American hammer at the last house before returning to the park. Total AmHam count = 91. We made it back to the park where I shared one final tidbit of information before we began our Mary portion. You really won’t believe this one. Are you ready to experience the sheer frustration of defeat for yet another time? Tax Parcel Identification Numbers are given to every single lot in our town (and in every town/township/village/parish across our blessed nation). They are usually a combination of letters and numbers that indicate neighborhoods, blocks, deed books and pages, or other information deemed necessary by the county. In my research I wasn’t able to determine what the codes for Forsyth County, NC mean or represent, but they are presented in the following numerical form: ####-##-####.### Now, you can already see where I’m going with this but I want you to look it up for yourself if you don’t believe me. There are three tax parcels in Hanes Park. For all three of them, those middle two numbers are 67. I’m not joking. Here’s the link to the county GIS site and you can see for yourself: https://mapf.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=53620a0b6458437aa82bd5e91d8cc47b None of the other surrounding tax parcels have that two-digit code in the middle. Just the three in Hanes Park. Are you floored? Because I’m floored.

We did Mary by committee, featuring H2H, Muttons, Low Flutters, Juanitas, WWIIs, V-Ups, Burpees, Alternating Shoulder Taps, Gas Pumps, and coincidentally (or not!?) we had 67 seconds left for a plank before time was called. 

Hug your kids. Tell them you love them. And for the love of God, don’t let them put those two numbers in sequence on purpose ever again. Otherwise we all might die.

Announcements: Rollback’s Q at UA will feature his 50,000th burpee of 2025. That’s pretty cool. Converge at IS aka #TheMuthaship on 1/10/2026 for the 12th anniversary of F3WS, coffeeteria at 500 W 5th aka Flywheel building courtesy of Blue Steel & Inti House.

Prayer requests: Turnover’s mom got some health answers and has a way forward into health, YHC’s SIL is home and their baby is healthy and coming home tomorrow.

YHC took us out humbly, with awe and praise for the SkyQ.

Frank and Beans, I don’t know if you want these keys back. I don’t know what else you’ll discover. I recommend waiting six or seven days before even getting them from me.