Tracey Jackson

THE LOST ART OF REMEMBERING PHONE NUMBERS

Nov 11, 2012•by tracey •Comments

967-7375 that was my childhood phone number:  249-5854 the phone number I had when Glenn and I got our first apartment, and then of course all those phone numbers in between. Years and years, yards and yards of the phone numbers belonging to friends, lovers, agents, restaurants, stores, dry cleaners all stored tightly in the “Contact’s” file of my brain.

But now I find I can’t remember any phone number that entered my orbit after 2007.  This causes Lucy a terrible case of second child syndrome or in this case, second cell phone number syndrome. Because no matter how hard I try, I cannot remember Lucy’s cell phone number.  Every time I ask her for it, she yells, “You know Taylor’s.”  Yes, but Taylor got her cell phone the day after 9/11 which put it right in 2001:  a time when my ability to remember a phone number was still in fine form.

I can remember Glenn’s cell phone number as he has had it for ten  years. But put a gun to my head and I cannot tell you  his BlackBerry number which he recently started using as a cell phone while he tries to adjust to his iPhone where the number I remember lives.

I can rattle off my mother’s home phone number but always have to click on her cell phone if I want to call her on that. She just informed me she herself does not know her own cell phone number.

I have about five people I talk to every day and only two of those numbers do I know by heart. Though I often see the number as I click on “calling mobile.”

And there lies the problem, we are now a people who click and no longer dial or punch.   When we punched or if you are old enough dialed, the number actually went from the tip of your finger down your arm and up into the phone book of your brain.  OK, I ‘ m not sure that is the exact route, but it might make sense, and for the purposes of this blog it will have to suffice.

And after you did that enough times it lodged there for if not eternity at least a good decade or so.

But now that we are clickers we have totally lost our ability to remember numbers.  For a while I thought it was just me or another sign of advancing age.

I mentioned it to Taylor this afternoon and she said couldn’t remember any number after the 7^th grade. I felt  better. I at least have some still stored away that go back to the seventies, but 7^th grade!

Then John who works in the building chimed in, (we were in the elevator) he said he couldn’t remember any numbers at all anymore. None.

A big relief this was not some early Alzheimer’s warning sign.  I can stop lying in bed at night trying to remember phone numbers, an exercise that only agitates me and makes it harder to fall asleep.

No one remembers them.  And I think it’s a bit sad.  Knowing someone’s phone number “by heart” was often a sign of exactly that;  a sign of closeness, sometimes early intimacy, how important a place someone held in your life.  It revealed things about you to others, what restaurants or delivery places you used or liked.  How often you called your doctor. I actually do remember my doctor’s number but he has been my doctor for thirty years. I had to give it to someone the other day and they were truly impressed I knew it by heart.   They were expecting a share contact from me and I rattled it off.
This also probably announces my hypochondria, but that is OK.  I don’t really like having my entire life and personality traits stashed in my cell phone.

What I really hate is that I do not know Lucy’s number. What do I do in an emergency or if I lose my phone? I know you’re saying sit down and just remember it.  I’ve tried. It’s not that easy.  My brain refuses to retain it.  It keeps saying waste of time, what are Google contacts for?

But how do I convince her this is not a sign of child preference but an indicator that the muscles we don’t use whither away?

I do know this ~ it’s a 646 area code, which means it came in when they used up the 917’s, which was after my phone number memory skills shut down.  Blessedly there is still room for area codes, but I’m sure in a few more years that will be a lost art too.