Having the Numbers of Things On My Mind

In the beginning, it was pretty simple. I had a birth date, which hasn't changed, a birth weight which grew exponentially and continues to creep blubberward, and a body length which now appears to be slowly headed back from whence it began nearly fourscore years ago.

Those numbers were later joined by the digits exclusively assigned to me by the Social Security Administration, when I first went to work, and the Marine Corps during World War II.

Parenthetically, it's worth adding that the serial number of the first M-1 rifle entrusted to my care in Boot Camp (586245) is etched in my memory as indelibly as any of the others. (Forgetting one's rifle number was a greater offense than going AWOL or dishonoring the flag, as I can still vividly recall.)

During my early years, only a few other numbers were important enough for commitment to memory, such as my home address and phone number, a few public transportation routes, the "times tables" drilled into my head by the Sisters of St. Joseph and some algebraic formulae which have been subsequently as useful to me as my appendix and vestigial tail.

It may also be worth noting that the mental arithmetic so necessary in days of yore has slipped into the same obsolescence as buggy whips and pre-marital chastity, having been displaced at the checkout counter by a digital readout. (You're well over the hill if you can remember the corner grocer licking his pencil and toting up the bill on a brown paper bag before stuffing it with your purchases.)

With modernization has come the computer, and with this mixed blessing an identity explosion which multiplies my inventory of "gottaknow" numbers almost daily.

As a young boy, I had only to remember a few four-digit phone numbers (and could get free "Information Please" help if I forgot them), I now have to keep tabs on the home phones, work phones, cell phones, car phones and fax lines of kith and kin, the latter now spread over four generations. Worse, if I have no independent record or recall of cell or fax numbers, "Directory Assistance" can't fill the void, despite their inhumanly high fees.

Computers have further complicated this complexity by introducing an alphanumerical jungle of e-mail addresses and web sites, which often give not the slightest hint of the target's identity. Much of my time is spent trying to recall the e-aliases of people whom I wish to contact through cyberspace or figure out who the hell might be hiding behind the "nom de com" of bunnyhug623@upthecreek.nz. (America Online, among others, exacerbates the problem by granting multiple addresses to each subscriber, but not making them accessible through their "directory.")

Then there's the matter of the Personal Identity Number or PIN number, a bastard child of Social Security, designed to set every living soul apart from every other, preventing them from invading each other's privacy or being invaded by 'other eaches.'

In concept, it's a good thing, except that I must be aware of different PINs or passwords for such divergent services as each bank account, burglar alarm, keyless car entry system, automatic teller machine, piece of luggage, debit card, credit card, retail charge card, personal safe, satellite TV receiver, frequent flyer fraternity and combination padlock.

My immediate descendants, of course, argue that all this information can easily be recorded and retrieved on a Palm Pilot or some such device, accessible, of course, by - you guessed it - a PIN number!

My concern, symptomatic, I suppose, of a Geezerish mind set , is about what happens if the Palm Pilot crashes before backup or contracts a virus-induced amnesia, or is cyberjacked by one of those adolescent hackers with nothing better to do than raise hob with modern technology. (In a similar vein, I never stand in a checkout line without wondering what they'd do if the "system" went down, there being no human capable of reading bar codes, and a few probably unable to manually tote up the tab and make change.)

Coupla centuries ago, Robert Louis Stevenson penned this "Happy Thought" in his Child's Garden Of Verses:

"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

I suspect that the number of numbers in our present world is at least partially responsible for its shrinking number of kings and/or the threat to a king-like happiness therein.