My Digits

"My number area code six oh four, five five five, eighteen thirty-one."

It was another time I regretted saying it that way, as I watched him scribble out his mistake. I mean, I could have said it either of two ways: digit by digit, or in two sets of double-digits.

1-8-3-1.
18-31.

tommy tutone says to call jenny at 867-5309You'd think it wouldn't matter. And it doesn't, for the most part. But back then, I had one of a few special numbers that celebrated world-renowned numberologists refer to as "confusion phone digits". By celebrated world-renowned numberologists, I mean nobody: nobody calls it that. But that's what they are, because they're phone digits that cause confusion. (Try to keep up.)

And somehow, I found this combination of digits easier to say as "eighteen thirty-one" than "one eight three one". Could be the "three" part immediately on the tail of the "eight", I dunno. But invariably, I watch the person copy my number like this.

81831.
Or 1831.

And then they glare at me, as if I had said "five five five, eight ... teen thirty-one" and laughing at them while they had to correct their mistake.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I didn't get the 01831. where'd the zero come from? ~ miscmusings

Ben said...

It should have been a crossed-out "8". I tried to fix that ... does it appear correctly now? And that "1" is when they try to squeeze it into whatever space they didn't allow for the first time ... :-)

Anonymous said...

oh I get it. It came out fine, i just didnt' know it was a crossed out 8, thought it was a 0 w/ a line through it. =) (i got the superscript one) ~ miscmusings

Kevin said...

Our numbers here are also 8-10 digits, and when people tell numbers, they don't wait for you to get part of it first. So it's like, 6045551831, instead of 604... 555....1831. But it's in Chinese, so it's harder for me to remember the rhythm of the digits as I would for English.