Cellebration of the senses

Just sent e-mail to friends and family letting them know that my old phone number is back in commission. It's funny how much I've missed it. I think I was a fairly late adopter of cell phone technology and even used to self-righteously make disparaging comments about those who seemed surgically fused to their phones. That was until the accidental presence of K.'s phone in my truck made it easier to arrange logistics on the hardest day of my life. When I got my own phone, I also got that number. Now I am thinking that some commentator on pop culture or psychology or (post-)modernity or technology should do an article on how a phone number can quite unconsciously/subconsciously become a bit of an extension of personality. Someone probably has. Though I open myself to being mocked, I admit to feeling that my phone number (especially the cell phone number) is, whether I like it or not, part of who I am. Maybe that's because it works for me in reverse. Rather, seeing the phone numbers of others (especially on the cell phone screen) brings those people to mind and evokes whatever memory or emotion I associate with them. Perhaps this is why I've always kind of enjoyed entering numbers by hand every two years when the plan expires and we get new phones. Not that I could have had them electronically transfered this time even if I'd wanted to, and it would have been tempting, as entering the 55 numbers I either had memorized or written down caused my thumbs to cramp (those who grew up playing video games have no idea what that would even feel like). Yesterday K., seeing what I was doing, asked, "When you put in a number, you picture that person, don't you?" Indeed, I did. And I heard, felt (and in the case of Zachary's Pizza, The Nantucket, Chicken Express and J's Garden), tasted and smelled them as well.