The saga of the (damn) phone continues and blah blah blah

Before my first day of nursery school, my parents made sure that I knew my phone number: 20588. There was an area code (had been for almost ten years), but there wasn't any reason to use it, well, not for a four year old. A few years later, we got an exchange, and our number became RAymond 20588.

(As I write this I am somehow resisting the temptation to call the complete 10 digit number and introduce myself. "Hi, my name is Noodles and I had your phone number in 1956.")

I'm obsessing about this today because I spent waaaay too long yesterday making over my cell phone contacts list. When I got my first cell phone, I entered local seven digit numbers, sans area code, because there was only one local code. Then, about a year ago, a second one was added, and it became necessary to do 10 digit dialing here.

I redid my phone list, and a mighty big pain in the ass it was.

Yesterday, we Canadians finally got a working Skype client for Android phones, and I soon realized that while the powers that be in Red Deer, Alberta were fine with 10 digits, the rest of the world wanted country codes, and, for some reason, a plus sign.

So, when I had a young facile brain, I only had to deal with 5 numerals, and now that I am losing brain cells like a hairy dog sheds his coat in April, I have to mess around with 11 and the damn +.

Maybe I will call Katie and Scott P in my hometown and bitch about it--after all, they have my oldest phone number now, so they owe me.