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68

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#68. I once had the perfect phone number.

Okay, you’re gonna think I’m a schmuck for this one. No, really, even more than you already do. I know, I know, it doesn’t seem possible. Well, keep reading — you’ll see.

So, I always have a hard time remembering phone numbers and PIN numbers and things like that. (And names, and birthdays, and just about everything else that I can’t fit in writing on the tag on my underwear or the palm of my hand. It’s an interesting life; it really is.)

Anyway, to combat this debilitating lack of remembery, I have to try to find relationships or mnemonics that I can use to help me keep those numbers in my head. This is a constant battle I fight, but I’m getting better at it. I still remember an old friend’s extension where we worked eleven years ago, for instance. But that was an easy one — his number was x6976. Or ’69’ and ’76’. A sexual position and America’s birthday. So I came up with ‘Sexual Revolution’ to help me remember, and I haven’t forgotten it since. I probably never will. I couldn’t even tell you what my friend’s friggin’ name is at this point, but I can still call up the desk where he worked a decade ago. This, for me, is a major accomplishment. Useless, perhaps, but major. Right up there with stuffing three tennis balls in my mouth at once.

So, while I was living in Pittsburgh — that same eleven years ago, as a matter of fact — I got a phone number, purely by accident, that spelled out a bad joke. And not by converting the numbers to letters, either. I mean, just as numbers. It wasn’t a very good joke, of course, but it was a hell of a handy way to remember my phone number. Here’s the joke:

What’s a sixty-eight with two people?

That’s when the guy says to the girl, ‘Hey, let’s do sixty-nine, except I’ll owe you one.‘

Har de friggin’ har, right? Not exactly Richard Pryor, is it? Hell, it’s barely Carrot Top. But, here it is again, with significant highlighting:

What’s a sixty-eight with two people?

That’s when the guy says to the girl, ‘Hey, let’s do sixty-nine, except I’ll owe you one.‘

See? Sixty-eight, two, sixty-nine, owe (oh), one. 682-6901. How fucking cool is that? Sure, people (like, oh, my mother) looked at me a little funny when I told them the whole story. But not one soul ever forgot my phone number. I’m still tryin’ to get it for my cell phone, so I can have it forever and ever. So far, no luck. Though I do have a cell number that spells out something to do with beer when you convert the numbers to letters. So it’s not all bad. My alky friends don’t forget the number, at least. And for now, it’ll have to do. Until I can wrangle Sprint into changing it to my old number. Why oh why did I ever give it away?!