h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just came within a hair's breadth of putting my phone through the laundry

If you'd have said that 40 years ago people would have looked at you as if you were stark raving

I was going to say 20 years ago, too, but I suppose it'd be possible to knock a cordless handset into a laundry basket, though it'd be a bit more noticeable!

I did once, but I was washing my coat, which is waterproof, and it was in the map pocket. And it was a water resistant phone. I did realise after 15 mins, but no problem.

Cordless handsets. I never thought of those. I had one for a while before I got rid of the landline but I had or used regular old telephones for most of my life. In fact, one of the three numbers I'll remember until the day I die* is our phone number when I was a kid because we had to say it when we answered the phone. People don't do that so much these days.

*The other two are our old Co-Op divvy number and my VAT number.

About 10 years ago, I made a mental catalogue of all the numbers I could recite from memory. Some, like my parents' phone number and my TX drivers license number I still use. But many were well obsolete, like phone numbers no longer in use. I can still remember the lock combination for my high school locker (16-20-36, mainly because it mnemonically forms a valid equation, 16+20=36).

I was rather amazed at just how many numbers I could still recall even after a decade or two. But a quick thought of it now, I think that list is rather shorter now. I can still remember the phone number of a childhood friend, (534-4309) and the store number of the drugstore I worked at when I was 16-17. I don't remember any of the phone numbers or addresses I had when I lived in Huntsville (college). I don't remember any current or previous credit card numbers. A few I still use will seem familiar when I read them but I can't recall them unprompted anymore.

Yep, my memory has never been exceptional, but it's definitely fading now.

I used to do my weekly lottery numbers based on the street numbers of houses where I've lived. It wasn't until I visited one of them on Google Maps that I discovered it was number 19 of that particular street in Manchester I'd lived at, not 17. This obviously doesn't mean that I missed out on becoming a millionaire, because if the other five numbers had come up I'd still have won a considerable sum and probably wouldn't be sitting here now, but it's curious how, for all those years, I was convinced I lived at number 17.

I doubt I could recite a single phone number now, at least numbers that I use nowadays (I can still recall one friend's phone number from teenage years) because we don't need to any more. They're all programmed into our phone's memory and we just push a button to dial. Hell, sometimes I can't even remember my own number.

I kind of miss rotary dials

when I was 8 or 9 we went on holiday from Windsor to Scotland in a rented car. My dad asked me to remember the last 4 digits of the mileage when we began for some reason. 2288. He never asked me at the end of the trip which is why I hink I've remembered it for all this time.

I remember my best friend at junior school's telephone number
several of my dad's vehicle registrations (his mini 370 XPE being the best of them)

My NI number and NHS number. My dad, my husband's and my regimental numbers.

And the serial numbers of about 15 pieces of communications equipment from the commuications centre at 16 Signal Regiment. We had to check a list of about 300 pieces of kit at each shift change, my colleague knew every single one of them by heart. (in fact if I ask her she can probably provide the list from memory)