Monday, December 19, 2011

50+ years of history...

Just canceled my home phone service. It is silly that something so trivial has caused me so much stress and anxiety. I have - literally - been agonizing over this decision for months now. Which is stupid since it will be saving me a good chunk of change every month on something I hardly ever use anymore.

Except, the number has been in the family for decades. My grandparents got the second line number back when phone numbers were only four digits long. The reason? So their four teenaged kiddos could call their friends and have some privacy without monopolizing the family phone line for hours on end.

The number was tied to my grandparents' house until my grandmother passed away in 2005. My sister took the line one number (6276) and I took line two (2313). We both kept the numbers until this year. Amy lost hers when she bought her house and moved over the summer. I've moved mine twice without issue, but having the landline was costing close to $40 a month. Which is ridiculous considering I hardly ever used it, solicitors and politicians were the only people who ever called me on it and I dreaded having to empty out the voicemail every so often.

And, yet, I've held on it for nearly seven years. Leave it to me to make something stupid like a phone number into something sentimental. And, yet, there you go. It is just part of my charm.

But this afternoon something just snapped. I was trying to watch the news and the d@mn landline kept ringing and ringing with incoming calls from MOD, UNAVAILABLE and POLITICAL CAMPAIGN. Seriously. Five spam phone calls in less than twenty minutes. And I just couldn't take it anymore.

You just don't get between a pregnant lady and her compulsive need to watch the weather.

Afterwards, I might have had some residual regret and called my mother in a panic. And, well, I'd be lying if I said I didn't cry a little. Yes, over a phone number. I mourn stupid things.

It should come as no surprise that this IKEA commercial had me in tears when it used to run on TV years ago:

Consider the 2313 landline number the red lamp in the rain,
and my iPhone the replacement.

The funny thing about the whole situation was that the AT&T sales rep randomly asked me if I would like a year of channels like Showtime, The Movie Channel, FLIX, STARZ and Encore added to my cable bill. I initially said no until the sales guy informed me that if I accepted my cable bill would be $14 a month cheaper than it was if I didn't add these channels. Which I don't pretend to understand. It might be a scam even though the guy kept insisting that it was some sort of promotion and all I had to do was call next December and cancel the extra channels if I didn't want them anymore.

Still? Get more? Pay less? That can't be right, can it?

I guess I will know for sure when I get my next bill. Which, thanks to the lack of landline and promotional cable package, should be $50+ less than what I have been paying every month. That definitely helps take the sting out of losing a sentimental phone number.

And being able to watch shows like Dexter and Californication doesn't hurt either.

1 comment:

Melissa said...

I'm sad too, if only because I have your landline memorized and not your cell. I have so few numbers memorized these days, it seems a shame to lose one.