Cell phones are very convenient, but they deprive us of the intimate connection we used to have with phone numbers. Back when you used to have to dial someone’s number each time you called them, your thumb or forefinger would leap around the keys in a familiar pattern while the numbers echoed in your head, sometimes in a singing voice mimicking the bleep of digits. Certain early numbers wore a groove into your brain that you will remember on your deathbed, like a prayer or advertising jingle. But my generation might have been the last to know phone numbers this way. Now, you just find a person’s name on your phone and press “call.”
        Numbers are supposed to be abstract. There are a million ways to look at, say, a leaf, but even toddlers understand that whether it’s three teddy bears or three cherries or three marbles, three is three is three. Yet, when we know phone numbers by heart, we know this is not the whole story. Phone numbers have personalities. Certain ones are more beautiful than others, or more friendly. Attached to you for years or decades, handed down like fate from the phone company, they seem to be trying to tell us something.
        But what? Phone numbers are not quite meaningful, like words, but not quite meaningless, like the PIN the bank gives us.
        It’s as if the mind was uncomfortable with abstractions and needed to give them concrete qualities. I experienced this often in high school. When, confronted with yet another algebra equation, I would find myself rooting for one variable over the others—usually the one I considered the underdog. After years of homework, the different letters took on distinct personalities: strong, forthright x; x’s nemesis y, foiled again and plotting revenge; and standing somewhat outside the fray, elegant n, the secret agent or dandy. But, like phone numbers, the image of each variable tends to shimmer when I examine it. How much of an upright citizen can X be, for example, when, more than other letters, it symbolizes the unknown, and its barred arms symbolize negation? And is n suave and blasé or bland and neutered?
        For some people, the associations to each symbol would be very clear and consistent, and the jump from abstraction to sensory or emotional experience would not seem strange at all. Synaesthesia, the joining together of sensations that are usually experienced separately, is an actual neurological condition. It runs in families. Probably the most spectacular case ever recorded was that of Solomon Shereshevsky, described by the psychologist A.R. Luria in his book The Mind of a Mnemonist. Shereshevsky’s world was a synaesthetic jungle: every object or word triggered associations across multiple senses. His crossed sensations were so vivid that he complained, “If I read when I eat, I have a hard time understanding what I’m reading – the taste of the food drowns out the sense…” He had associations to numbers as well: “5 is absolutely complete and takes the form of a cone or a tower – something substantial. 6…has a whitish hue; 8 somehow has a naïve quality, it’s milky blue like lime…”
        One can only imagine the paintings or poems that a ten-digit phone number would create in Shereshevsky’s head. Most people are not blessed with synaesthesia – research indicates the rate is about three percent or less of the population – but I suspect that there are many for whom, like me, numbers have anthropomorphic and aesthetic qualities which assert themselves, dimly but insistently.
        I recently decided to explore this very private world of number associations and preferences by asking a completely unrepresentative sample of New Yorkers to discuss the three main New York cell-phone area codes. Some looked up and away and struggled to describe tantalizingly hazy fantasy worlds. Some said, “What?”
        917 was the general favorite, accorded highest status as the “real” New York cell phone prefix. In more than one case, this was the only number the subject had any associations with – the other ones were simply undesirables, impostors unworthy of attention. People associated cooler colors with 917 – grays and blues, although one person said it was definitely red and green, and I myself picture it as red and black. One person imagined 917 as slick and appealing, having access to coveted concert tickets and good pot delivery numbers. Another pictured 917 as somehow Abe-Lincoln-like: tall and gawky yet distinguished. It’s easy to imagine that all 917’s prestige is due to its being older and more established, but I think it also has something to do with the number itself. More than one person mentioned that the contrast of high and low numbers made it dramatic. I would also suggest that the presence of both the highest number on the keypad and the most glamorous (that of course being 7) contribute to this area code’s sexiness.
        People generally had less to say about 646, which surprised me, because the number itself is at least as suggestive as 917, with its palindromic repetition and even digits. I have always thought of 646 as clean and acceptable but a bit bland – definitely a blue number – but this association was not widely shared. One person pictured 646 as rather squat and tubby. In general, 646 came second in the preferences and assessments of status. The respondents who preferred 646 all said not that it was the best, but that it was right for them—as if they were happy to be left out of that 917 craziness. 347 of course was the loser, the dot biz, of the three. As one person said, “If you’re gonna get 347, you might as well keep your old number.” Another pictured someone trying to make up a fake number on the spur of the moment: “It’s, uh, 3, 4…7…”
        It would be interesting to conduct a larger and more representative survey. After all, real synaesthesia is fascinating, but these not-quite-random associations are also fascinating; I was going to coin the term “pseudosynaesthesia” before I realized the word was “imagination.” These flickering associations are like creatures that lurk in the corners of darkened rooms but turn back into socks and t-shirts when you look right at them. Vladimir Nabokov was a famous color synaesthete – he wrote that he saw his initials as oatmeal and rose quartz – but he was a writer, not a painter. Colors play a major role in his books, but they are subordinate to the needs of a given story. Although he saw colors very clearly in his mind’s eye, other associations must have been more flickering and needed words to cement them. Maybe it’s this flickering quality of objects in the imagination that makes people take the trouble to create art. Shereshevsky himself was not an artist, a fact which is not surprising when you consider the overwhelming richness of his everyday experience. Why bother to write a symphony when all you have to do is sip coffee with the window open?
        So now we can reach our real friends more easily, but we may have lost imaginary friends. I’ll miss 617-492-6427…and 718-638-1422… My cell phone still knows these numbers, though. I press the button and it calls, after that little pause it always makes before executing any command. My Nokia is a plain model, but very reliable, although sometimes if someone has left a message while it’s off or I’ve been on the subway, it will wait an hour or two to tell me about it. Then, out of the blue, it’ll give a loud beep!—as if it’s just remembered. It’s cute. In general, though, it doesn’t give me any problems. The few times it drops a call, it’s one I wanted to drop anyway – I swear sometimes it knows what I’m thinking. Some people are always fighting with their cell phones, but the two of us have a good relationship.