In 2025 adults started talking and writing about a phenomenon they couldn’t understand – kids shouting the numbers 6 7 followed by a weird hand movement which apparently became a craze. According to a BBC article the phrase “67”, which first gained popularity with Generation Alpha, has gone on to become a viral internet sensation and was even named Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2025.
It reminded me that I too had a childhood relationship with the numbers 6 and 7 and brought back memories from the early 1960s. I had recently moved from London’s Stamford Hill to the posher Finchley and was attending Hasmonean Primary School, an Orthodox Jewish Faith State school in Hendon. In the mornings we had Jewish assembly followed by religious studies. During the summer term of 1964, the topic in Jewish assembly that week was the story of David and Bathsheba. In Hebrew, the word for Bathsheba is Batsheva. Broken down, Bat means daughter and Sheva is the number seven. Batsheva can also be translated as “seven years old”.
One morning, the headmaster, Mr. Cohen, stood in front of my class row in assembly, raised his hand and pointed at us. Gliding his hand from right to left, he announced with authority “YOU … are the most beautiful girls in the world, because you are all seven!”
I felt shock and panic – I was six.
I had to be seven! Immediately. I couldn’t rationalise that according to his Batsheva theory I would eventually become beautiful in August during the summer holidays. I had to be beautiful now. I had to be like the others, not cast out on my lonely island of non-beauty. But I was very good at arithmetic so worked out that in order to be seven all I had to do was subtract a year and change my date of birth to 1956. We used to have to write our birth dates in our exercise books. It calmed me knowing that simple forgery entitled me to join the world of beautiful girls and not be the traumatised, shamed outsider I felt myself to be. And voilà I became 7 just like that!
One day my parents received a phone call from the school who wanted to clarify how old I was as my date entries didn’t match their records. I was outed!
Nowadays I see this story as part of my journey towards authenticity, self-acceptance and embracing my reality. At the age of six I needed validation and felt ostracised from the beautiful group. A sense of otherness remains and I can still feel left out, but on the whole it manifests as individuality and independence. I have reclaimed the number six.
6️⃣7️⃣❣️