The ### Will Remain A Mystery

So I was getting a new cell phone plan last year and they asked me if I had a particular number I wanted to request. And I found that I was not at all prepared for that question. If I had known I could pick my own number, I would've brought a list! But I got excited anyway since I still had time to pick one before they activated the account. Obviously, I had to stick to my area code, but they gave me a list of five or six combinations to choose from for the next three numbers. And then I could pick the last four. I started scrambling. I eliminated anything with a 1 or a 0 in it, because those numbers don't have letters on their keys. I was always jealous of those businesses that spelled stuff with their phone numbers, and I wanted in on the action.

See, when I got my first apartment, I got bored (really, really bored) one day and decided to figure out what my phone number spelled. It turned out I was one letter away from ###-MY-GERMAN. But if people dialed the whole thing, it wouldn't matter that they dialed the last 6 for the 'N'. So that's how I gave my number to my friends. And it was awesome. And no one ever forgot my number.

So they finally gave me a chance to do the same thing with my cell phone. I huddled myself in a corner with a pen and paper, sweating onto my new cell phone's keypad, trying to rearrange letters and hoping my slight dyslexia would finally serve a purpose. I figured if I could come up with a really cool word out of the last seven digits, I could just tell people to call me at ###-COOL-MAN or something like that. I picked 6-7-6 for the fourth, fifth, and sixth numbers because I figured I could start with "MR." something after the area code. And I felt like something awesome would strike me at any moment. The problem was that I had a pregnant wife who was not amused, a one-year old boy with the attention span of a one-year old (shocking, right?), and a cell phone saleswoman who was wishing she hadn't said anything and hoping I would just pick something and get out of the store so she could leave on time. Eventually I heard the stupid "sales associate" (cell phone lady) say, "What about 3-7-3-9? That spells DREW. Didn't you say your son's name was Andrew?!" And she said it all cheery like she had figured it out and cracked the case. But I told my wife that I didn't care how late we stayed there or how upset she got, I was gonna find something that worked! And she could walk home for all I cared and glare at me like that all she wanted to. It wasn't gonna change my mind about the fact that....

So 30 seconds later, we were headed home and my number was officially ###-676-3739. And I felt pretty defeated. The only thing I could come up with that number was ###-MR-N-DREW, which is stupid. No one would think that was funny or clever. But then my slight (self-diagnosed) dyslexia kicked in and I thought I saw something else. When I switched the 'D' and the 'E', I saw the word "NERD". Then I realized that the 'W' was on the same key as the 'Y'!

So now my cell phone number is ###-MR-NERDY. And I will never change it.