[Callers] Triplets

Hi all I just encountered a triplet in the wild for the first time (they don't get called much around here, and I've been out of the dancing loop for a bit) at our Santa Rosa (CA) contra last Friday. It was Ted's Triplet #24. Apparently wild cheering is traditional when one of Ted Triplets is announced? As an English dancer, I found it to be a pretty simple and straightforward dance and a nice break from loads o' longways, but the contra dancers all around me were falling to bits, apparently completely flummoxed by the small sets. How often do triplets show up in programs where you dance? How often, and in what sorts of settings, do you call them? What do you do differently to teach them, to help contra dancers with the unusual formation? They seem like useful dances, both for a change of pace and for those dreaded dinky crowds, but as I mentioned, this was my first time encountering one in years of dancing. Are they more common on the East Coast? Kalia