While Don is vacation we are running this, ‘Best of Column,? first published in September of 2002.
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It’s been well over a week since the phone gods brought down their reign of terror over us mortals. We, of flesh and blood and bone, who have had the unfortunate destiny to live in or work in an area with ?248? as an area code, have been unjustly doomed to an eternity of (at least) ten digit dialing.
And, I’m here to testify, it’s been telephone hell here on earth. For the most part my ten-digit dialing has been an exercise in the 17-digit plan. This plan is, I am sure, used by many readers. Here’s how it works for me: I dial the phone number to next door as it is ‘sposed to (and used to) be. I hear the funny tones from the operator. I cuss, then dial the new and ‘improved? ten-digit number. I hate to re-dial, but my brain isn’t catching on to the new rules.
And, it’s really bumming me out. I have been a hard-line telephone number guy. I refuse to use speed dialing. I like the idea of remembering a phone number and dialing it versus remembering a speed dial number. As far as I was concerned, speed dialing was only good for the dummying down of America and turning our brains into mush. I may be forced rethink this old theory.
Damn those cold and uncaring phone gods and the power they hold over us, pawns in their games!
Even the great warrior L. Brooks Patterson, (aka the Oakland County Big Cheese) was proven to be a mere mortal. While Patterson has the power to hold a spoon to the tip of his nose without using his hands (I have seen this with my own eyes), he didn’t have the magic to go against Ma, Pa, Sister and Brother and the rest of the family Bell. He put all the might of his largess into holding off the phone gods; tried to persuade them to leave those in the world of 248 be, that there were plenty of phone numbers to go around, that we were not too prosperous and didn’t deserve a godly spanking.
They smote him down, vanquished him and the rest of us to a two-way area code. Phone gods can be so cruel. Starting this year our good old 248 area code will be blanketed with another, 947. Life used to be so simple.
Ah, for those days of 313 or even 810. It’s hard to believe that in a short ten years we in the region have buzzed through three area codes.
I’ve tried to come up with some sort of mathematical equation/relationship between 248 and 947 and I am not coming up with anything that sounds good: 247 goes into 947, 3.81854838709 times. If you divide 947 into 248, it comes out to point twenty-six something or other. Nothing to hang a theory on there.
What the heck is it with overlaying or coexisting area codes? Who’s the brainiac that came up with this concept? In case you’re wondering, why, I a lowly scribe, am crying out against the phone gods, it is because I have already been banished to another phone hell dimension — the Goodrich Zone.
Because Goodrich is served by a minor phone deity, Centurytel, anyone we call south, east and north of us is a long-distance, toll call. An 11-digit dialing nightmare. So, while the heavy -weight telephone companies in Michigan, like Ameritech, are expanding their local calling areas, the smaller companies, like Centurytel, are doing nothing, because they don’t have to. Centurytel, by the way is the third largest telephone company in Michigan and something like the eighth largest in the country. At any rate I can complain. What are they gonna? do, take away all my push-button phones and replace them with the rotary dial ones? I don’t think so.
As the area’s population and prosperity grows so too will grow the need for more overlaying and co-existing area codes. In the not too distant future, folks in the 810 area code will be forced into a ten-digit deal, whether they like it or not. It is time for the American inventors out there to come to our rescue.
With current technology, satellites and computers, every American should be able to have his or her own personal phone number that follows them where ever they may go. It’s time to break the shackles of area-code slavery.
We need to be freed.
It’s time for a reformation.
No, it’s only time to pay the phone bill.
Comments for Don can be e-mailed to: dontrushmedon@aol.com