Can You Remember Your Childhood Phone Number?

Of Course You Can!

I have a friend who uses her childhood phone number as an internet password.

“There’s no way anybody is going to guess that,” she tells me. “And no way I’ll ever forget it.”

Do you still remember your childhood phone number? Of course you do!

I’m so old that mine had letters in it too. But no area code. (In the 1960s, they weren’t yet in general use.) Back in the day, your phone number always began with a letter. They were called “exchanges.” Our exchange, in Detroit, was “Diamond,” which was abbreviated to DI.

My first phone number? DI-11275.

Those first phone numbers will be lodged in our brains forever. If you’re my age, they evoke memories of sturdy black rotary phones and busy signals and phone books. Remember learning to dial? The first time you mastered the art of turning the little circle with the holes in it?

Dialing a rotary phone — that’s one activity that’s never coming back.

I can’t recall the many phone numbers I had after DI-11275. Each new stage of life brought a new phone number. When I went off to college in Chicago. Then worked as a waitress in Palo Alto after college. Attending law school in Boston. Practicing law in Bangor, Maine.

Then I got married and we moved to Philadelphia and had a son — and we got our first marital phone number: 610–668–4252.

Now, 30 years later, my son is all grown up and I’m long divorced. But I managed to hang 610–668–4252. I used to joke that when Rick and I split up, he may have gotten the house — but I got the phone number!

In the end, that phone number lasted longer than my marriage.

Good old 610–668–4252 served me well for many years. When we phoned everyone to announce the birth of our son. Later, to share the good news about the publication of my first book. And then, the awful news of our divorce. Years later, telling everyone that my son had gotten into a great college. And, of course, my very favorite call — the day my son phoned to tell me that he and his girlfriend were engaged.

But nothing lasts forever. I switched phone providers a few years ago and couldn’t take 610–668–4252 with me. I was given a new number.

The first thing I did was phone my friends to tell them about it. Most, of course, didn’t answer the phone because they didn’t recognize the number.

This bummed me out a little, but I told myself not to get too sentimental about it. After all, it was only a phone number. And yet, it felt as if there ought to be some kind of ceremony to mark the occasion. At the very least, a Hallmark card.

Roses are red/Violets are blue/I’m finally saying farewell/To 610–668–4252.

Then I realized that I’d forgotten something important. 610–668–4252 was my son’s childhood phone number. So it may be gone. But it’ll live in his memory forever.

Writing Coach and editor-for-hire Roz Warren, who writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, can help you improve and publish your work. Drop her a line at [email protected]. (That’s Ros with an “s,” not a “z.”)