Six Six Six

I remember when I was living in LA, in the Silverlake area, and the phone number I was assigned had a 666 prefix. I found this amusing and took no issue with it whatsoever.

Other folks varied in their reactions. Some would laugh, some would say "seriously?" and some got a little bent out of shape over it.

One woman, in particular, got a lot bent out of shape. She asked for my phone number and in LA you have to give the area code first because there are several of them down there (it's like that here in Portland now, but I don't know about the rest of the states - are there still states in the U.S. in which you give out your number without the area code first or is that a thing of the past altogether?). So I give her my area code, which was 213, and she writes that down.

I then continue, "666" and she just stands there, but says or does nothing. So I repeat myself.

"666..."

She looks up at me and asks if that is really my phone number. Yep, I tell her, and wait for her to write down.

"That's horrible," she says, "why didn't you request a different number?"

"It doesn't bother me," I tell her, "it's just a number."

She then looks at me as if I were Adolf Hitler himself and had just said that human skin lampshades make the best lampshades EVAH. I look back at her and shrug, just wanting to move things along.

"I can't write that," she tells me.

Okaaaaaay, I don't know if she was super religious or super superstitious or a debilitating combination of both. Now what?

"Do you want me to write it for you?" I offer.

She considers this and says that she doesn't want to look at it. She tells me she'll be right back and I'm left standing there. A different woman returns to continue filling out my form.