So I just got a phone call for a previous holder of my phone number… a “wrong number”, in the vernacular.
This in itself is not that unusual; I’ve been averaging one such call every week since I got the service, though they have been dropping off somewhat lately. The unusual thing is how taken aback the callers tend to be at this occurance.
Let’s do the numbers, shall we? I’ve had this phone number of about fourteen months now. Phone companies generally hold numbers for 90 days after they’ve been disconnected, before assigning them elsewhere. So we’ve got a case of someone who hasn’t tried calling a number for a year and a half, who is shocked that the number no longer works the way it should.
Now maybe this is just me; I mean, I’m still relatively young, and my friends of my own age are for the most part just beginning to buy houses and put down roots. I expect a certain amount of mobility; any number that I haven’t called for a year and a half, I generally take to be suspect until such time as I can confirm it. But still…