How many of you still remember you childhood phone number? Mine was (601) 863 - 6882. This was the phone number Ma Bell gave us when we first arrived on the Coast in the mid '70s. Like most parents of Gen Xers, Mom and Dad were insistent I commit this numeric string to memory. One would have thought it was a level 7 incantation against any misfortune that could befall me. "Did you get lost? Are you injured? Facing a raiding party of wights? Fight your way to some stranger's abode and request the use of their phone."
This phone number stayed with us for the next four decades, three house moves, and two different cities. We kept the number when, in 1997, AT&T split the state of Mississippi into two area codes, flipping us from the now northern 601 to the coastal 228.
Dad called this number every chance he could when he was on deployment. In those days, overseas calls from Navy Seabee bases were routed through radio operators. This necessitated ending each sentence with "Over", indicating to some unseen radio man when to flip the switch on a transceiver. While cumbersome to a conversation, it was pretty cool for a 7-year-old. It's like Dad and I were clandestine agents and me telling him about the latest plastic model I'd assembled was actually code speak for a high risk operation where we were going to save the world.
Not every call that came in was that cool. On rare occasions, other moms would call my mom to inform her of my shenanigans. One call that really set her off was a report I'd been caught launching bottle rockets at someone's backyard window. The CIA's network of international listening posts ain't got nothing on the Neighborhood Mom Telegraph. Mom listened silently as one of the neighborhood agents gave her the details. She then glanced my way with that furrow in her brow that did not bode well for me. Mom was understandably appalled and apologized profusely. Once she hung up the phone, it was a terrible sight to behold as her quiet embarrassment transformed into high decibel, Category 5 anger.
But on balance, calls received by that number were positive. When I eventually struck out on my own, it continued to be my link to home. I could pick up a phone anywhere I happened to be in the world, dial that numeric string burned into my memory so many years ago, and have a conversation with Mom or Dad as if they were right in front of me. In that sense, it did become a high level, magical talisman of sorts.
A little while back, Mom gave me some news that hit hard right in the feels. In an effort to shed unnecessary monthly expenses, she was ditching the old family landline. The phone number I'd known for over 45 years was being retired.
Like most of us, she was eschewing a landline in favor of using her mobile full time. Ironically, if my life depended on it, I couldn't tell you her cell number. She told me years ago, and it's entered in my contacts simply and succinctly as "Mom". But I'll bet if you ask me in a few decades, "Yo, Wayne! What was your phone number back in the summer of '75?" I'll have absolutely no problem rattling it off, and I doubt I'll ever be able to lose it.
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