Kennedy Gordon

I am not very bright. This is no secret, because I tell people this all the time, and they laugh because they think I’m joking. But I learned, many years ago, the Dave Foley trick that involves sounding like I know what I’m talking about. Arching one eyebrow works, too. Wait, Dave Foley was pretending to not speak English. I got mixed up there.

Lately, my mental misfiring has been brought to the fore thanks to the recent change in our area code to 10-digit dialling. Now we have to dial the area code before the number, even if we’re calling next door. This has presented some challenges for me.

• I don’t know anyone’s phone number. I don’t even know my own. I keep a little card on my work phone with my office and cell numbers on it so I can rhyme them off confidently while playing phone tag, but ask me on the street and I have no clue.
• The only way I get a number into my phone is to save it when someone calls me. Now I have to get those people to call me again so I can save their numbers wth the “705″ in front, but I can’t, because when I press the button for their name, it doesn’t work, because I didn’t dial the area code, and I can’t dial the area code because I don’t know the number.
• For some reason, I remember my childhood phone number, but none of my adulthood home phone numbers.
• This is because of speed dialling, which has been around for about as long as I have been a grownup. My home number is “1.” Work is “6.” My mother is “2.” The pizza place is “3.” On my cell phone, I just click on the name of the person I want to call.
• I do know a few numbers by heart, but I know them only as patterns to hit. Ask me what they are, and I couldn’t tell you. Now that there’s an extra three digits to type, my rhythm is off.
• We are hardwired to type a “1″ before an area code, so that has been a tough habit to break. The other day, I was working away in my home office, so I used my cell to call upstairs to the living room from my studio to get someone to bring me a coffee, and I hit the “1″ first, and no coffee appeared, which I found confusing. I ended up having to put The Bionic Woman on pause and go get it myself.

Anyway, my significant other recently gave up her cell phone, preferring to go without, which had nothing to do with the thing about the coffee, I think. I myself am on my dozenth or so phone since the mid-90s, a list that has included that big chunky Motorola brick, but I am considering following her lead. Dialling is just too hard now.