A Bit Depressed About Losing A Bit Of The Past

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Oct 13, 1999
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A couple of days ago I called over to my mom's house (where I used to live) and got a message saying that the phone number was either disconnected or no longer in service. We had all recently bought cellphones and mom had said that she was going to have the home phone disconnected. Still it came as a shock to me.

It might seem a little silly, but I'm a bit down about this. The trusty number that always rang home for the 25 plus years of my life was no longer operational, but disconnected, out of service, gone. Cell phones may enable you to reach someone wherever they are, but to me their numbers don't seem, what are the words I'm looking for? Solid, grounding, personally memorable, or personal, period? If you asked me for mom or brother David's number, I'd have to look it up on my own cellphone. I know my dad's cell number by heart, but he's had his for awhile. I've dialed his number digit by digit. With mom and Dave, I pressed a button on my cellphone, gave a few voice commands, their numbers were dialed automatically. Like something out of Star Trek almost. Flip open my mobile communicator and hail the rest of the Away Team.

If I care to start manually dialing their numbers, I can learn to memorize them, maybe even embrace them. But they won't hold the same sentiment as my old stay at home phone number.

Now that I've gotten this off my chest, I feel better. I also realize how much the writing styles of Munk and Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts are rubbing off on me.

Bob
 
I sympathize with you. There's something about phone numbers even if I can't exactly put my finger on it. It is just too easy to use cell phones these days. Just look up the number in the phone book and dial. No need to remember numbers.

To tell you the truth I find this whole phenomenon disconcerting. When I was younger I had dozens of phone numbers memorized. Family, friends, even the local movie theater and my favorite pizza joint. You know all the important stuff. These days I'd be hard pressed to recall even five phone numbers. I don't know if it's because I'm losing my mental faculties or because I no longer care about people enough to remember their numbers. Either way I'm not very happy about the whole thing.

Maybe it's just me, but I think that our phone numbers are associated with our identities. Whenever I meet a pretty girl at a club or bar my short term goal is on getting her number. After all, that is how I'm going to keep in contact with her. When I get it I'm ecstatic. I can talk to her and get to know her better. I have to admit though that once I've lost interest nothing is easier than erasing her number. It's a clean break and because I've never bothered to memorize her number it'll be like she never even existed. Now if I do that it's a sure bet that others do it also. And I don't think that's right, to just press a button and erase people out of our lives.

Kamagong AKA as the one who had a little too much to drink tonight.
 
Just over fifty years ago, we moved out of the apartment I grew up in. Before we had been allowed to go out alone, we were drilled in our names, address, and phone number: WAdsworth 8-5067.

I'll probably forget my name before I forget that phone number, and for the life of me, I don't think I ever called it. It was just something I needed to know in case of an emergency away from home.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Just over fifty years ago, we moved out of the apartment I grew up in. Before we had been allowed to go out alone, we were drilled in our names, address, and phone number: WAdsworth 8-5067.

I'll probably forget my name before I forget that phone number, and for the life of me, I don't think I ever called it. It was just something I needed to know in case of an emergency away from home.


We were DRake 8-4745 and lived at Route 1, Ellenwood Georgia (no zip code). LIfe was simpler then.
 
Bill Marsh said:
We were DRake 8-4745 and lived at Route 1, Ellenwood Georgia (no zip code). LIfe was simpler then.
No zip code? Did you write in cuneiform?

:D

I lived at 707 West 171st Street, apartment 3G, New York 32, New York. 32 was the zone -- it became Zip 10032 when the Zone Improvement program came along.

When I started with the Postal Service, i worked on computer-controlled letter-sorting machines, which were called ZMT -- Zip Mail Translators. ZIP was Zone Improvement Program and MAIL was Multiple Address Information Logic.

In the old days, clerks sorted mail into pigeonholes. Today, we sort mail into email folders. :p

I learned long ago that the answer to complex civilizations and their ever-increasing floods of data is to know less but know where to find more.

But what do you do when your cellphone battery dies and you can't even retrieve the number you need to call on a pay phone?
 
411



Kama...your "too much to drink" post is better than those by many folks in other forums who are cold stone sober.
 
Pay phone? What a quaint old-fashioned concept.
(Do I really remember when a three-cent stamp brought two mail deliveries every weekday, and one on Saturday? There was a morning newspaper and an afternoon newspaper? We used to stare at the test pattern on my grandmother's TV, waiting for the programs to begin? Ethyl (unleaded premium) gas was 19.9 cents a gallon?)
Nah - I think I'll email a friend in Australia.
 
I hadn't really thought about it until you mentioned it, but I remember every phone number of every place that I've ever lived in. I don't remember all the street addresses (although I do remember all the streets) and I can't remember my cell phone number, but I remember all those home numbers.
 
I still remember the no. we used when I was a kid.......760771....six digits

Now we have 8.....bigbob you started this thread and brought back a piece of my childhood memories........thanks
 
it does offer one ray of sunshine, when she calls and berates you for not calling more often, you can now honestly make HER feel guilty by reminding her that you have trouble remembering that darn cellphone number after all the years of calling her on the old beloved landline she instructed you on calling so long ago...
 
kronckew said:
it does offer one ray of sunshine, when she calls and berates you for not calling more often, you can now honestly make HER feel guilty by reminding her that you have trouble remembering that darn cellphone number after all the years of calling her on the old beloved landline she instructed you on calling so long ago...

No need...I still live with my mom . :)
 
Nice post Big Bob:) That makes sense to me. My dad is trying to sell his boat. This boat was designed by my dad and the boat builder down the road (literally about 1/4 mile). Herb (builder) and my dad worked together everyday on that boat and it was finished the summer of my 4th year.We spent many days and nights out on that boat and most of my fond memories of childhood with dad are tied up in that boat. But it costs alot of money (more each year) to keep up, and dad is going to be 80 this fall. It's just a memory shell that eats money at this point. So it needs to go. But it's gonna hurt when it does. just like it'll hurt when dad goes. Hopefully the memories will remain, and even if they fade the love will continue.
 
As Bill would say, "Great posts, everyone". Interesting info on the ZIP and MAIL accronymns, Esav.

Bob
 
good post...

my last "home" had the number get lost when my mother left it. shortly later, it was bullbozed, the property utterly devasted - not a single thing left. it's a mini-mart now. as they said in _grosse point blank_ "you can't go home, but you can shop there"... :P

the woods i grew up in, and played in, 400 acres of "unbuildable wetlands" somehow has housing tracts on it now. unbuildable? someone broke the law there now. good luck with those sink holes in 15 years folx :)

soon, the woods near my apts, a good sized acreage, is being surveyed busily and marked up for something. i imagine they'll start sawing trees down before summer. bleah.

and the worst thing of the past to lose? our skies. light pollution. people forget, or never knew the joy of black nites and skies so bright that you can just about read by them. oh well.

if i had the money, i'd buy a mountain, and fight to keep it pristine.

bladite
 
Big Bob is right. A phone number was often part of a family and home. Not just one, but several generations could have grown around a single number. I had a stability in my life when my old Man finally stopped moving around and stuck to aerospace in So Ca. We lived in the same house in Anaheim for 8 years. That was a long time for me. I can just imagine a family sticking it out in a stable economy job/career and having the same address and phone number for many more years than that.


Good thread.



munk
 
munk said:
BI can just imagine a family sticking it out in a stable economy job/career and having the same address and phone number for many more years than that.
A friend of mine told me about sending his son to visit his mother's family in Sicily. They lived in a castle that had been the family home for some 500 years. Inside it was completely modernized.
 
Angeles9-4519 was my number 55 years ago. I was sad when my parents moved and we lost the number. It was like a part of me went away too.
 
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