Sorry, Right Number

I simply wanted to reach out and touch someone who could explain to me why a two-minute night-time call from Philadelphia to St. Paul coast 32 cents while a two-minute night-time call to my Philly home the next night coast $1.38. It defied everything I had learned in geography in the third grade.
 
The AT&T man asked me to identify myself. I did. He said he was sorry but that was not the name he had for this phone. Well, sir, I said, this is me, and we’ve had this phone for over a year. I explained that we had taken this unlisted number to foil burglars whose M.O. was to hit houses on our block when no one answered the phone.
 
He excused himself and I typed away on a story on my Macintosh while he schmoozed with his supervisor. Then he came back on and asked me, like a recent graduate of a gumshoe school, what had been my last phone number. I missed it by one digit, giving him a 333 prefix out of my Alzheimering memory instead of what later inspection revealed to be 331.
 
The supervisor came on and in a somewhat stern voice addressed me with another name which I can only surmise was the man with the 333 prefix. His tone was such as to chide me for messing around with the phone company.
 
Why would I mess around? I’m calling with my bill in hand from the phone number I have been paying AT&T from for over a year, and he wants I.D.
 
There must be a special ring in Dante’s Hell for the judge who wangled an anti-trusting American public into believing that smaller was better in the phone business. Smaller, baby, is bitter.
 
Believe me, if I had been any good at starting fires as a Boy Scout 50 years ago, I’d abandon the phone system entirely for smoke signals.
 
From Welcomat: After Dark, Live Coverage, October 11, 1989