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Josh Knox

Just Joshin' #196 (6-7)

Published 4 months ago • 7 min read

Family Photo:
6-7

Your familiarity with 6-7 is a good litmus test for the degrees of separation between you and a six or seven year old. (or is it ligma?)

In case you need to catch up: 6-7 was a line in a rap song, which was used in the mixtape of a professional basketball player (who was 6'7"). Another basketball player (not a professional, but big on YouTube) kept forcing 6-7 into video interviews, along with a palm-up seesaw hand motion (is this aura farming?). From there, the meme somehow spread to every elementary school in America. Later, when pressed by a Wall Street Journal reporter about what 6-7 actually means, said original rapper demurred, "I never put an actual meaning on it."

I was vaguely aware of 6-7 as an internet meme at its peak popularity last summer, and observed with amusement its infiltration of Calvin's 1st grade class throughout the fall. In October, Calvin came home to announce, "Clara asked her Alexa what 6-7 means. Guess what? Alexa says it didn't mean anything at all!"

After Thanksgiving, I noticed Calvin and his friends started adding the play-with-a-slinky hand motion to their 6-7s. They sometimes chain them together with other numbers now: "6-7, 9-11, 27". I don't think they know what 9-11 is. We'll address that later. I don't know what 27 is. I think it's just there because 7-Eleven has too many syllables.

I'm reminded of the "Cool S" which arrived at my school around 3rd grade. Where did it come from? What did it mean? According to Wikipedia, we still don't know. It was everywhere though. At all the schools.

I told Calvin 6-7 was a nationwide phenomenon. Newspaper articles had been written about it. His eyes bulged as he covered his mouth and gasped, "You mean 6-7 is famous?!?" He had no idea.

"I can't want to tell me friends at school tomorrow."

In Why Did We All Have the Same Childhood?, Julie Beck notes that childlore spreads, perhaps obviously, through children. Older kids mentor younger ones, at school and at home. It spreads geographically from school to school via new kids. And also through cousins, usually kids' closest peers who don't attend their same school.

Iona and Peter Opie, childlore researchers, wrote in 1959, "The scraps of lore which children learn from each other are at once more real, more immediately serviceable, and more vastly entertaining to them than anything which they learn from grown-ups."

"It's 6-7 O'clock!" Calvin yelled tonight during bath time.

I checked my watch: it was 7:30.

Dad Joke:
6-7

Why was six afraid of seven?​
​Because seven eight nine.

Source: Old Joke
Image: ChatGPT​

Highlights:
6-7

​The Year “6 7” Ate Parents’ Minds by Katie Baker​

I hadn’t really seen this coming, even though I obviously should have. Fueled by the collective passion of a big-umbrella youth movement that welcomed everyone from little kids to sullen teens, the nonsensical, numeric 6 7 meme reached all corners of society in 2025, from pro sports to a Jimmy Fallon segment featuring Sydney Sweeney and Labubus all the way to the Congressional Record. My second grader’s Artsonia account was clearly no exception. Nor was my fourth grader Graham’s recent bowling alley birthday party, where the young celebrants, given free rein to choose their names for the scoring screen, inputted handles ranging from “I am so ligma” to, of course, “67676767676767.” As they bowled, I observed that these 9- and 10-year-olds were more focused on knocking down six or seven pins than they were on achieving strikes or spares.
​
Driving home afterward, I asked my younger son and one of his friends the very questions you may find yourself currently wondering: Where did 6 7 come from? And what does it mean?
...
​
I asked the boys what it all meant—this inescapable meme that all year long has permeated what feels like everything. They responded quickly and in unison: “nothing.”
...
​
Earlier this week, Malcolm and I sat in the audience to watch his big brudda, Graham, perform in an end-of-the-year improv class showcase. Every time a new set of kids went up, the instructor invited someone in the peanut gallery to shout out a word or two to incorporate into the scene. You can see where this is going. After a few rounds of anodyne suggestions from various parents—winter! a jungle! Taylor Swift!—the child I still refer to as Baby Malcolm, all curled up in my lap, grew emboldened. “Six sevvvvvven!” he finally chirped.
​
Unfortunately, this brought the house down. In that Wall Street Journal article I mentioned earlier, a teacher had described the effect the numbers six and seven have on kids and teens as “like throwing catnip at cats.” Sitting in the elementary school gymnasium, I saw exactly what that looked like firsthand. Every person in the room under the age of 20 activated instantaneously, their eyes snapping wide open like dear little demons, their arms gyrating en masse. (Say what you will about this whole phenomenon: At least it demonstrates that the kids are actually listening!)
​
These children were about as happy as they could possibly get. Their improv teacher, however, was understandably not.
...
​
On a recent Sunday morning, I sneaked away from the chaos of my home to attend a “Sunday Soul Flow” yoga class....When my class began and the teacher asked us to set an intention for our yoga practice, my inner soul screamed out: serenity.
​
We were in the midst of an uncomfortably long reverse warrior pose when the teacher encouraged us, in an entrancing, breathy monotone, to stay focused and strong just a little bit longer. “We’ll hold this for about six or seven more breath cycles,” she murmured, and suddenly it was like one spell lifted as another took hold. “Ha, my son would love that!” she exclaimed in her regular voice. “Six SEVVVVEN!” I laughed a little too loudly, so as to convey both understanding and mama-bear solidarity, and promptly lost my focus, and strength, and then my balance altogether.
​
Ultimately, in our own middle-aged lady way, the yoga teacher and I were doing the same thing with 6 7 that no less an expert than the Dr. Becky says that the kids are: joining in on the fun, signaling to one another that there’s something we both know about, even if it’s not something that we necessarily understand. One linguist who looked into the spread of 6 7 noted that it effectively functions as a “shibboleth”—a kind of password-y, in-group code word—and called the phenomenon an example of “semantic bleaching,” which is what happens when a phrase gets repeated so very often that it loses all meaning and just sounds like noise.

​The ‘Fighting 67’ by William Stearman​

We called our ship the “Fighting 67,” because with her we had engaged in more amphibious landings—including nine in the Pacific theater—than any other LSM. She had been commissioned in September 1944 and was one of the fleet’s workhorses. With a maximum displacement of 1,000 tons, the 206-foot ship carried 55 enlisted and six officers, including the group doctor, as well as a combat load of six Sherman tanks, an array of other vehicles, crews, and embarked infantry.
​
In action in the Pacific, our first-wave assault landings had included three major landings in the Philippines and Borneo. As the war progressed, the powers that be decided on 18 June 1945 to invade the Japanese main island of Kyushu in Operation Olympic, scheduled for 1 November 1945. I was serving as LSM-67’s gunnery officer and communications officer, and in that latter capacity had acquired the Olympic operations plan. Scanning the intelligence annex, I felt sick to my stomach. There was no way we could have survived that landing. The U.S. estimate of the costs of a main islands ground campaign included some 500,000 casualties. The Japanese had estimated their casualties at some 20 million. I had just turned 23 and had less than four months to live.
​
Operation Olympic was never to be. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August and on Nagasaki on 9 August. Six days later, Emperor Hirohito broadcast that Japan had surrendered. The official surrender took place on the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay on 2 September. For me, on the Fighting 67, this was like getting a last-minute, death-row reprieve.
​
Our ship was now tasked with bringing surrendered Japanese troops to assembly areas in preparation for travel back to Japan. Incredibly, one of our prisoners turned out to be a general who had commanded troops against whom we had been fighting. Somehow, I learned that he had gone to German Staff College in Potsdam in the 1930s and was still a German speaker. In turn, I had learned a good bit of German in high school and had taken a course in military German at Berkeley.
​
We had one of the most interesting conversations I have ever had. I kept asking him why he had made so many (in my opinion) clearly stupid moves. He agreed they were stupid, but he underscored that his orders had come from the top in Tokyo and had to be obeyed. I instinctively shook his hand and saluted him, for which I was given a bad time by our other officers.
...
​
When we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge on 11 January 1946, I was in command. My top priority was immediately to get a shipyard availability to overhaul our worrisome main engines and check out our beaten-up hull. I was told LSM-67 was going to be scrapped, not eligible for repair. This did not stop the Navy from ordering me to pick up a potentially dangerous cargo of steel pilings at Port Hueneme and haul it all the way around to Jacksonville, Florida.
​
Such was the saga of the Fighting 67.

​67 | Dictionary.com's 2025 Word of the Year​

...if it’s a surprise to you that 67 (pronounced “six-seven”) is somehow newsworthy, don’t worry, because we’re all still trying to figure out exactly what it means.

​67 Meme | Know Your Meme​

Shades on so I roll with the glasses
Bro say er cus he a savage
So many dead opps, so many ashes
You ain’t catch that I can’t pass this
Shooters stay strapped, I don’t need mine
Bro put belt right to they behind
The way that switch brrt I know he dyin
6-7
—"Doot Doot" by Skrilla​
​
"I never put an actual meaning on it, and I still would not want to … That’s why everybody keeps saying it."
— Skirlla, quoted in the Wall Street Journal

iamJoshKnox Highlights:
Math Adventure Hub

​Math Adventure Hub has multiple modes: addition, subtraction, dice, coins, fractions, etc.
I should add a 6-7 mode where all the math problems use the numbers six or seven.

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Josh Knox

Hi! I am Josh Knox. Read more of me here: 👇

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