The area code criminal
When we were in the Holiday Inn in St. Louis, I wanted to call Queens but I couldn’t remember if the area code was 718 or 708.The operator said, “You live there and you can’t remember your area code?”
I said, “Is it a crime if you can’t remember your number?”
She asked me where I wanted to call and I said, “Queens.” She couldn’t understand my pronunciation, so I said, “It is the feminine of king.”
So I was teaching her vocabulary and she was teaching me pronunciation.
— 27 June 1987
Sri Chinmoy, The world-experience-tree-climber, part 5, Agni Press, 1994
