A Few Thoughts On Phone Numbers

It is an archaeological dig through my folks life. You can track my career by the crossed out numbers and addresses.

I need to backup the contacts in my phone. I don’t know… don’t use… numbers any more. My folks are “5.” Helaine, though number one in my heart is number “2” on my phone. AT&T reserve number “1” for voicemail.

My mother has a dog eared phone book she leaves in the kitchen. Over the years water and food have made the book look ‘lived in.’ There are dead people and former friends still maintaining their space. Extra pieces have paper have been inserted where overly popular letters have run out-of-space.

The book is an archaeological dig through my folks life. You can track my career by the crossed out numbers and addresses.

No one uses address books any more. Well, no one below a certain age uses them. Your cellphone is your address book along with your wrist watch and alarm clock.

The concept of area code is passée too. I have two friends in California whose numbers on the “Caller ID” say New Jersey. My daughter will probably keep her Connecticut number for the rest of her life… or as long as she can.

A few years ago phone companies were complaining they were running out of numbers. You don’t hear that today. There are two additional area codes reserved for Connecticut–475 and 959. They were supposed to be introduced in 2001. I doubt we’ll need them in the near term future.

2 thoughts on “A Few Thoughts On Phone Numbers”

  1. “The concept of area code is passée too. I have two friends in California whose numbers on the “Caller ID” say New Jersey. My daughter will probably keep her Connecticut number for the rest of her life… or as long as she can.”

    Yeah. Ever since number portability, that’s been the case. For example, my cell phone has a suburban Chicago area code (where I was living 9 years ago when I got the phone before heading off to college!) I’ve kept it while living in Milwaukee (414), Rockford (815) and now Madison (608). In fact, if you look at the directory at work, you see a whole slew of area codes. Mostly 414 or 262 (suburban Milwaukee), though, for the non-608 numbers.

    -Adam

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