“You’ve had this phone number for 30 years! Are you sure you want to cancel it?” Yes. Yes, I do. And yes, there are people who aren’t particularly happy that I’m canceling it. Including me! But I’m doing it *anyway*.

Yes. I have had the number 662-2983 for 30 years. I was not the original person to be assigned that number. It was the Marquis of Regenaxe. I had to wrestle with the phone company to take it over from him when he and the Grand Poohbah got married and moved to St. Louie* and I took over their apartment. Yesterday, I had to wrestle with the phone company again to finally disconnect service to it.

It isn’t easy to disconnect your land line. They make you call the phone company. Ever tried try to call the phone company? I’m just sayin’. If I could have used the inter-tubes to disconnect my phone, I’d’ve done it a long time ago. But you can’t do that. Why? Because they need to “verify your identity.” Know what that means? They need you to tell them your name and the last four digits of your social security number. In other words, it’s horse-crap! They *could* collect that information over the information highway. They want you to call them so they can try to plead, wheedle, and cajole you into keeping your old land line phone service. Even if you haven’t had a working telephone connected to it for the last three years. “But you are a preferred customer yada yada yada.” Roight. And, “Well, what are you going to use for your phone service?” Um, the device I am calling you on maybe? After 12 minutes of this stuff from two (count ’em) customer service sales representatives, I finally said, “We have three iPhones here. Your company is making plenty of money off of us.” And so it ended.

I am sorry. I know there is at least one person who is a little sad about this. And I’m kind of sad too. It’s a little like the day a couple years ago when I cried after I dragged a battered old garbage can out to the curb for a special old garbage can pickup. It was here when we moved into the Landfill 24 years before and it was old and battered then. I had no personal attachment to it at all so wtf about the tears. Phone number? That’s a little different. My childhood telephone number still exists, although the person who retains it is now pretty successfully using an iPhone. I can remember my friend Laurie’s phone number, which I called at 8:00 every Saturday morning. And I remember the bank telephone number that I used to call and ask, “May I speak to Jack Finlayson, please?” when I needed to wheedle something out of my dad. A couple other important telephone numbers, my grandparents’ and my friend Helen’s, are lost to me. Try as I might, I can’t dredge them up. I guess they’re in some obscure data base table somewhere within the far reaches of my brain.

But this is the 21st century and we were paying $40 a month for a landline and long distance service we haven’t used for several years. Farewell 662-2983. I hope you end up in good hands. I will never forget you. Literally.

* The Marquis is probably gonna hate that I wrote “St. Louie”. I love him and I’m just messing with him. 😉

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