It's between six and seven in the evening at the office and between eight and midnight at home that I receive the calls.

That brings me to your first question—about why I consistently get so many calls when so many people get none.

Let me make it clear at once that even if the polls were buyable or fixable, and I'm not suggesting they are, I haven't the means to buy or the electronic knowledge to fix supposedly random calls. Besides, I'm fairly ethical.

Then what's the answer?

Naturally I've given this phenomenon more than a bit of thought, and I've formulated a theory to explain—at least to my satisfaction—why what's happening's happening. I believe the drawing power of my phone numbers inheres in the nature of number.

Now don't go getting hot under the collar—if you're still wearing collars—before you hear me out.

I'm not talking about numerology or any such mystical hocus-pocus. I'm talking about the psychopathology of everyday life. That's what's skewing and skewering the law of probabilities.

I know this demands explaining, so I'll be specific.

Apart from these calls from the rating services, I keep receiving calls on my home phone from people who set out to dial a certain undertaker—I beg his pardon, funeral director. We have the same exchange, in fact his number differs from mine only in that the first of his last four digits is a zero while my corresponding one is a nine.

Of course by now you've put your finger on it. These people are dialing the under—funeral director because, in the current colloquialism, someone's number's up. They misdial because they're unconsciously saying nein to the zero of death.

I've analyzed both my home phone number and my office phone number in this fashion, figuring out what their components connote singly and as gestalts. And I can see why these fortuitous combinings command attention, why these numbers leap out of the directory pages right at you. Privately I call such a number a common denominator with a way of accreting its numerator.

I hope you're not laughing at me.

After all, when you remember what number is, what's happening follows naturally. Number's a language we use to blaze our way through the wood of reality. Without number we couldn't say what is more 

 Prev. P 3/4 next