A New Number, A Lost Piece of the Past

My mom had to change our home phone number. With the continuing collapse of SunRocket, her VoIP provider, she felt the need to switch immediately. Had she waited 10 days, she would have been able to transfer her SunRocket number to her new provider. But she felt she needed a land line immediately, so she took a new number.

This may seem a bit over the top, but I tried to convince her to wait the ten days to keep the old number. She has a cell phone, and if you plug in a phone into any phone jack, you can call 911 whether or not you pay for land line service; she could afford to wait. She seemed confused by my last minute plea and asked, "are you stressed about your MCAT scores or something?"

My mom didn't understand my attachment to the old number; to be honest, it surprised me as well. I didn't think I'd be so attached to 7 digits, but I associate those 7 digits with home, with my childhood and adolescence. We've had that number almost the entire 21 years we've lived at that house- I think my dad in fact picked that number out personally. My friends would dial that number to speak to me on the phone for hours. I anxiously awaited boys' phone calls in high school, hoping they would dial that number. It's still one of the only numbers I have committed to memory. I feel I've somehow lost a little bit of the past by losing that number.