As Ernestine the operator, Lily Tomlin said it best: “We don’t care. We’re the phone company. We don’t have to.”
Well, they’ve spread out the uncaring
since when she said that there was only one major phone company. Now there are
many. And while area codes became standard in the 1940s, they were
optional and for the longest time, we didn’t need to use them most of us didn’t
know they existed.
Now there are so many and so easy to
fake they’re all but meaningless. Except to those who -- unusual as it
seems -- live in the same area code their phone number says they do.
You figure they have to subdivide big
places like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. So, multiple area codes in
the same geography have become common. But in the suburbs?
The original Long Island, New York area
code was 516. But the Island was still growing in those days and eventually,
they had to restrict 516 to Nassau County and gave Suffolk a new code, 631.
Now, even with sky high taxes, widespread traffic jams and fuel prices for the
rich and famous, Nassau has outgrown 516 so the deities will assign what they
call an overlay.
The new three digit number?
The envelope please.
(Narrator opens the envelope)
And the new added area code for Nassau
County is…. Wait. Something went wrong here. Where’s the number?
There’s no number in the envelope
because they won’t disclose it until they’re ready to use it.
They sometimes do. Not this time.
OK, we know this much: The second digit
can’t be a zero because all the center-zeros were taken by the original
codes. It can’t start with a “1” because nothing can start with a 1 which
tells the machinery that an out-of-area call is about to be made, at least in
some places. (Sometimes you don’t need the 1 for that anymore. But you
never know when.)
It can’t start with a zero because that
would mean an international call. It can’t end in “11,” because that’s
used for tech support and directory assistance and emergencies. It
probably won’t start with “5” because overlays never start with the same digit
as the code they already use in that place.
So, we’ve narrowed it down a bit.
There are only 720 combinations of three digits. There are 320 area codes in
use in this country. That means we’ve narrowed it down to 420 possibles.
But since they can’t start with 1 or have 0 in the middle there are about 70
choices, 61 if you don’t count 11.
So let’s say 60. Make it even.
There’s a money game possible here.
Lottery Agencies, those hotbeds of
gambling addiction, political no-show jobs and impositional poverty could make
a little on a game like this but probably won’t because… they’re like
...the phone companies. They
don’t care. They don’t have to.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my
own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com
© WR 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment