Holy Guy, The Origin Story.

The way I got my phone number is as follows... When I went in to get my cell phone plan (my first cell phone number) back in 2003 the company I got it with, which is the same company that I use today, was a lot smaller than they are currently. What they were advertising in 2003, which was not the industry norm, "Nationwide Local Calling Area" greatly attracted me to that phone company. Since I was so fascinated with that aspect of the plan I asked the salesman setting up my plan, "Since the nation is my local calling area may I get any area code possible?" After a pensive moment he responded, "yeah I guess so... I don't see why not. What area code would you like?" I told him I would like area code 415, to which he, visibly frustrated, spurted out, "Why did you ask if you can have any area code if you only want 415?" I responded, "I just wanted to know if it was possible." He shook his head in bewilderment. Recalling, how a friend at that time had the phone number (415) Money-42, I thought wouldn't it be cool if my phone number spelled out something? I asked him if I could have any phone number in the 415 area code. He told me that not all the numbers were available but many numbers available that start with the exchanges, 444 & 465 were. The first number that I asked him to check for availability was (415) Fly-Dude, a 465 number... It wasn't. (I didn't ask for the obvious (415) 444-4444.) Fly Dude was taken. I then asked for (415) Holy-Guy, and the rest is history... FOOTNOTE I: After the salesman said that (415) Holy-Guy was available I asked if another number was available so that I could have decided which one I wanted. He responded, even more frustrated this time, "No (415) 465-9489 is your number." Also, for the first year or so I didn't even know my own phone number! I just knew it as (415) Holy-Guy. I didn't know (or have memorized) the actual numbers! And nor did my father. We would often times joke about how neither one of us knew my phone number. We only knew it as spelling out Holy Guy. Now with the smartphone it's possible to type in (415) Holy-Guy into a text field, copy it, and then paste it in the telephone app of the smartphone, and when dial is tapped my number will be dialed... That's pretty cool! FOOTNOTE II: Again I stress that they were a very young cell phone company at that time, back in 2003, and so when I asked for this request, it was readily made available to me, and furthermore at no additional charge. FOOTNOTE III: When I got my landline phone number a few years later, in San Francisco, (there was a great deal I'm still making use of which is a local calling number through a local landline provider costing less than $6 a month if I don't use it all that much for outgoing calls.) I asked for (415) 563-4LEW. (Only the 563 exchange was made available to me.) There was a one-time $9 fee, which I figured was totally worth it. End of FOOTNOTES Moving forward in 2020... I would imagine that with most telephone companies it is possible to request a specific number, however, I would also imagine that a one time fee would probably accrue. And one might have to ask them what exchanges to start with, in my instance the 444, 465 & 563 exchanges were the ones that were.