Phone numbers you remember

Literally do not know my wife or mother's phone number because I programmed it into my cell phone once and never needed to manually dial it. But,

My phone number at our first house when I was a kid was 751-0108
Grandparents 678-3812
Phone number for second was 672-3627
Friend Mike's was 673-0819
Senior year in high school girlfriend was 863-5870

 

Same w/my Dad's cell. Had to look it up to give it to my daughter to input into her phone.

 

I think our first home phone number was 421-5516 but it also might've been the second number.

 

Our number in New Jersey (where we lived when I was 6-10 years old) was 625-0813.

 

Not only does 615.528.2115 no longer belong to my parents, it hasn’t belonged to my former hometown in more than 25 years. Too far away from greater Nashville, so it got exiled to 931 in the split.

 

I remember it being a huge deal when my parents’ area code changed from 215 to 610. I was in high school — half of the class changed and half didn’t.

 

My enduring memory of my mother will be the way she recited our phone number to people. “Eight six two … (long pause, almost always long enough to make you want to say “go on,” but just short of people actually doing so) … “Five one” … (another really long pause, in case you hadn’t gotten the first three numbers already) … “Nine four.” (With a really weird emphasis on the “nine”).

If we had 10-digit dialing at the time, it would have taken her almost a full minute to give people our phone number.

 

In my younger days, even though San Jose was in the 408 and San Francisco 415, you could call drop San Jose to SF without using an area code.

 

As long as they had unique and separate exchange numbers, you could probably do that, but I doubt that lasted long. Just dial 1 and the 7 digits and it probably sufficed.

Nowadays you have to dial 10 digits (and maybe 11 if long distance) a lot of times to dial from your landline phone to the phone in your pocket. Going the other way, you can touch one button to make the same call and it be free. That is why landlines are dying. I shitcanned my landline barely after the Aughts were over.

 

The direct-dial numbers for me and the sports editor at a shop I spent 10 years at.
The managers' number for another team and the number "in the room" for my current shop.
A couple of numbers I had while growing up.
The number for the AP bureau we had to deal with when I was in print.
The number for the first house I bought.

And, a fellow newspaper's toll-free number that drilled its way into my memory because the reporter who needed an assist said the number so incomprehensibly fast I had to listen to the message about three times to understand what he was saying.

Cross-thread with swearing ... I think it was the Grants Pass (Ore.) Daily Courier that had (maybe still has?) a direct-dial number whose final four numbers corresponded to F-U-C-K. One can only imagine the crank calls.

 

I dialed 1-900-MIXALOT to kick them nasty thoughts

 

I had to deal with an insurance agent once who did the unthinkable: He gave me his number in something other than the three-two-two (or three-four cadence).

I forget exactly what it was, but I think it went ...
one-two ... (pause) ... three-four-three ... (pause) ... five-six.

I mean, seriously, what the holy fuck? I wanted to fire bomb this asshat's office as soon as I hung up.