Project Sekong 2013: Some pay a premium price for a lucky phone number. I just want one I can remember.

I’m comforted by the research that shows that, like me, a great many Americans struggle to remember their phone numbers and passwords. Apparently the only password used more frequently than 123456 is the word “password” itself.

When I bought my SIM card for my Lao cell phone I rifled through a tall stack of cards hoping to spot a number that I had a snowball’s chance of remembering. Nothing clicked. With embarrassment I asked the clerk if she had more numbers to choose from.

To my surprise, she pulled out a binder full of numbers. Pages and pages of numbers, all classified by value. Some numbers, just ordinary, run of the mill, fortune be damned numbers, were cheap: in US money less than four dollars. Others, more auspicious, cost more — twenty, thirty, forty, fifty dollars and up. Then, at the top of the heap, were the crown jewels, costing a hundred bucks or more.

I harbor few superstitions, hold no truck with numerology, and am very, very frugal so I was not about to splurge on a special number. I limited my search to the bargain basement and finally found one with just enough logic to its sequence that I felt it just might find a home in my long-term memory. Do you recognize the charm of
55 110 432? For the price I paid, less than four dollars, it will do just fine.

Here are some of the expensive numbers I declined. There’s a doctoral dissertation in this for someone. But to me, they’re just numbers.

$10
59595400

$50
77446552

$100
23399959

$500
58888388

$1000
58888855

$2000
29999988

$3500
58877777