3...2...1... Blast Off!

Suddenly I am wondering what magical powers the number "3" possesses.
My nephew (and sister and brother-in-law) are staying at our house for a while as their move to Arizona progresses, and this morning I heard my sister playing with her son and everything came down to, "one... two... three... [insert desired action here: jump, run, fall down]. And it really got me thinking:
* The 3 Little Pigs
* Goldilocks and the 3 Bears
* "On 3..."
* 3 Blind Mice
* 3's Company
* There's a BMW commerical highlighting the number 3, along with a car named for it
* Third Time's a Charm!
* "You can have 3 wishes..." (Aladdin)
* 3 faries (Sleeping Beauty)
* Making a Trilogy of something is not completely unheard of... (Star Wars, anyone?)
* And what used to be my favorite (but also the one to which I am starting a one woman revolution...) "Ready? On 3, say cheese!" No if you've ever had ME take your picture you know that the actual click from the camera could come, and usually does, on a random number that is NOT 3.
The list goes on and on.

Perhaps this tradition of using 3 as some sort of marker goes back a long, long time. Who knows. Maybe people used to only have 3 fingers and so it was easy for them to get to three. Maybe it's just a nice in-between kind of number: more than 1 but less than 5...? Can you imagine if someone had made the standard at 12? Talk about being patient, to the little kid who just wants to jump off the side of the pool: "Okay, honey! On 12... 1...2...3...4...5........"!
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