What is your date of birth’, asked the nice lady at the other end of the phone. ‘18091944’ I replied. ‘Ah yes, I have you here,’ she told me instantly. Now, you might think that this type of information was being relayed to a hospital nurse, a garda recruitment centre – or even a life insurance company; whose job it might be to estimate how much longer I might be hanging around? No, my friends, this was my friendly bank making sure of whom they were talking to. I find that more and more, your DOB is the first ceist asked on any manner of business call. I know now for sure that ‘I am just a number.’
In actual fact, I am more than ‘just a number’ … I am a whole series of numbers, past and present.
I suppose my most important number is the one on my Public Service Card; the one which allows me to walk onto a train in Maynooth and step off within shouting distance of Croke Park. 6218349W* (altered a number or two, to keep somebody else from taking my seat on the train!)
Then I have a VAT number which is only good for a certain type of call. Similarly with my Herd number, which is no use on any phone call, except to the Department of Agriculture, my vet, or farm consultant.
My numbers game goes back a long way. When I played hurling I was number 31 … being the last jersey they wanted to hang on somebody. At the age of twenty my number got serious, when I signed up with Birkenhead Corporation as a bus conductor. I had to wear my green badge, with bold black numbers, on the lapel of my uniform at all times while working. I cannot remember the number, but it started with ’10 …’ The next number I became, I can tell you exactly, because I’m looking at it right now. After Birkenhead Corporation put me through driving school, I became a bus driver … and I have the badge to prove it! ‘PUBLIC SERVICE VEHICLE. 83864. DRIVER.’No, Lads, I don’t have a convict’s number!
The most important number I was given during those vagabonding years was my Canadian Social Security number; and strangely enough, whilst I have to read my Irish Public Service number, I can still recite my Canadian equivalent off by heart : 503-513-629* (see above)
At the end of October 1966, I hired on as a trainee miner (known as a ‘shoveller’) with International Nickel Company of Canada. I was given a silver badge with a four digit number, 2289* engraved thereon. That number was on my pay check, clock-in card, lunch box, seniority sheet, bonus sheets – and more than any other number in my life that is what I had become. To this day I use those four numbers for everything where numbers are required: Giving Lotto or raffle numbers, alarm code, locking phone, safe deposit box in hotels … everything!
I have a driving licence number, a bank account number, a credit card number, an Electric Ireland number, an Eflow number – not to mention of course an Eircode number. Is it any wonder that my head is sometimes spinning from doing the maths?
People bamboozle me with their daily numbers. I am told how many steps they took today – and what percentage of those were uphill. Whether I give two squirts of you-know-what one way or the other, it seems the most important item on the agenda is to discuss the number of calories my friend burned today. Sorry, but I don’t retain that number for very long. I hear, to the exact minute, how much sleep somebody got last night and what percentage is their sleep efficiency. Everyone is now nothing more than a bundle of numbers. And just in case anybody is interested (I’m going to say it anyway, Lads) I received 889 first preference votes when I ran in Westmeath County Council local elections … so there!
I was in a waiting room one day last week. Two ladies were the other side of a glass window – busy at work. ‘What about me’, I thought to myself, but I sat down quietly nonetheless. The other people waiting all had their eyes glued to a screen overhead. Not a TV, not a video, not a collage of scenery photographs … only a bright red number. 77 changed to 78 and a hefty woman stood up and was received at the hatch. ‘You have to take a number from the machine’, a kid sitting across from me helpfully explained. Every eye transfixed on the screen – as was mine until ‘Bingo’ … a red 82 came up and I was in!
I accept that I am just a number and this is what will be on my headstone when they plant me in Killulagh.
____________________________-
Pray for
6218349W (Nee: 503-513-629)
1944 – 2043
0f
N91 YX 60
Mathew: 25 : 21
____________________________________
Don’t Forget
May your troubles in the coming New Year be as short-lived as your resolutions.
