I am fairly sensitive to this. I lived in The 909 for much of my life, and in southern California 909 was considered the worst possible telephone area-code prefix to have — because it encompassed a region with economic issues, significant crime rates and some of the worst air in the world.

A few years ago, a little-known punk-rock band recorded the song: Christmastime in the 909 — which was not flattering to the “Valley of the Dirt” but actually was quite catchy. I’m humming it now.

But in the case of the 909 are code, I had no control. It had been the 714 area code when I arrived!

Here in the UAE, I have another unflattering phone number stuck on me … but I had some choice in the matter, if only I had been paying attention.

In the UAE, the land line is nearly extinct. Essentially, they built most of the country during the cell phone era, and everyone uses them — and has for years. Even the most humble of expat workers.

In the offices of The National, we have maybe a dozen land lines that work. And no one is concerned about it; we rarely use them. I can’t even tell you the number of the land line nearest my desk.

Anyway, one of the first things we did when we arrived here in October of 2009 was sign up for a cell phone. (Mobile phones, they are called here, in the British fashion.)

We went to the telcom outlet at a nearby mall, and we were given a batch of phone numbers to choose from — and we went for two that were only one digit apart, so that remembering one I would remember the other. A built-in mnemonic device.

And that 10 digit number had a 056 prefix. It’s not an area code. Cell phones here just have 10 digits.

A month later, however, I realized that all the Cool Kids in the UAE have numbers with a 050 prefix. Not just the Cool Kids. All kids. The whole of the country.

I’d guess that 90 percent of all cell phones here have the 050 prefix. Then there are a few dorks with the 056 or 055 prefixes. It isn’t a regional thing; it just says “I didn’t know enough about the country to know what I was doing when I picked a number, and my lack of hipness now follows me around.”

More than once I’ve thought about changing it, but my silly 056 number is listed as my contact number all over the UAE. I’m stuck with it.

And I could have done something about it, back on that first, fateful weekend.

So, back to the 909, which remains infamous in California. (A fellow American here, who is from Texas, knew about “the 909.” She said: “Did you, like, live in the 909?” And she smirked.)

A bad book named The 909 was published in 2004, and I reviewed it, in a previous lifetime. (It was based on disillusioned youth, and the author conceded he had updated The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway. How disillusioned must people in The 909 be now, after the 2008/09 economic crashes?)

If you couldn’t quite make out the lyrics in that “909” song, here is the link to the printed lyrics. They’re fairly amusing in a painfully “more than a little bit of truth there” sense.

First verse: “Smoke clouds rise up the chimney; meth lab in disguise; Dad gave Mom the same old gift, a set of two black eyes.”

Sigh. From the 909 to the 056.