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.