Do you remember Lily Tomlin’s telephone operator skit? One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy…?

We dial phone numbers all the time, using area codes even if someone is around the corner, adding numbers if our intended recipient is in a different country. There are 10 billion combinations of 10 digits. But let’s just talk about 3 digits.

The most common 3-digit phone number in America is 9-1-1. But there are others:

211      Health and human services

311      Non-emergency government services

411      Directory assistance

511      Traffic and weather hotline

611      Mobile (and pay) phone help

711      Hearing or speech impaired service to translate text to phone and phone to text

811      Call before you dig

911      Emergency services

We can dial 3 digits before an emergency, after an emergency, to get information, to get access to information. And now Americans can call to save a life from the scourge of suicide. Per the Centers for Disease Control:

From 2000 through 2020, the national age-adjusted suicide rate increased by 30% from 10.4 per 100,000 in 2000 to 13.5 in 2020.

How tragic. Each number is a person and so many of us know someone who has taken their own life. But now there is another resource: a national number to call when in crisis: 988.

988 – National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The United States Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs, administers the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is a national network of approximately 170 local and state funded crisis centers.

It can be a lifeline in every sense of the word. 988 is an example of working together so that someone in the throes of distress is neither put on hold nor asked to call back. It will be truly lifesaving and all we need to do is make sure that knowing this number is as common as knowing 911. As our tradition teaches: one who saves a life, it is as though they have saved the world (Talmud).