I sometimes have dreams that I’m eating batteries. Like I’m biting through them like they’re made of cake. And I’m like, “What am I doing? This will kill me! Lol” and then I wake up very confused.

But in a plane? Weeee! I’m in a glider!!

Bonk!

Violet

Huh. I must have missed this book in A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I knew about 5-digit dialing, but never knew people used to dial only 4 digits. That’s pretty neat, and probably made life with a rotary phone much easier than people my age realize.

I’m a younger millennial so it was no big deal to grab the landline and dial 1+10 digits to call my girlfriend long distance in 2009. On a rotary phone, it’d probably have taken til supper just to dial lol

I did find a rotary phone in a box at my great grandmother’s house once and played with it because it was fascinating to me. Then I dialed a random 800 number on it and remarked that it was kinda amazing that so many people bought things over the telephone in the day.

But it’s also why heavily populated areas have certain area codes. These numbers were just faster to dial. For instance:

• 212: Manhattan
• 213: Los Angeles
• 214: Dallas
• 312: Chicago
• 313: Detroit
• 314: St. Louis
• 321: East Central Florida
• 323: Also LA
• 332: Also Manhattan
• 413: Pittsburgh
• 415: San Francisco

Generally, if the area code took less time to dial, odds are it’s an urban code. The emergent pattern is when middle digit is 1 or 2. Like 816 for KCMO or 918 for Tulsa or 416 for Toronto.

And if it featured higher digits or a zero, it was probably rural. Area Code 907 was established in 1957 for almost all of Alaska. That’s 26 total pulses. 906 is for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and was put into service in 1961 after splitting off from 616, which services Grand Rapids.

Many of the high digit urban area codes were put into use after touch tone dialing became widespread since any number took just as long as any other to dial.

One thing I thought was funny about the way phones used to work is 5-digit dialing. So I reckon that larger towns in the area code got lower numbers as the third digit in their exchange codes because those dialed fastest, but I don’t know that for sure. What I do know is the town where I grew up has a population of about 400, and that digit is 9. The next town over is the county seat with a population of 20,000, and its original exchange codes end in 1 and 2.

Running on the assumption this is authentic and heterosexual, Anon’s parents massively dropped the ball creating an adult with no will to fly the coop. But then to cut them off cold turkey is totally fucked up. Anon is now permanently 15 years behind their peers. Not to mention zero retirement savings. That compounded interest takes 30-35 years to really start to matter. But Anon gets to miss out on 15 years of that, too.

I really hope things work out in the end.