To honor Harvey Pollack's numerical obsession, I really should have counted, or somehow rated, all the readers who responded to last week's obituary for the Sixers' statistics guru.
So fascinated were they by the details, the richness, the passions of Pollack's long life that it almost seemed as if this 93-year-old man's obituary were instead his public introduction.
Sadly, that's often how it works. For most of us, the only time anyone bothers to construct a narrative of our lives is after we're dead.
I guess that's why obituaries and death notices are the first thing I turn to each morning.