I was checking into The Restoration in Asheville. The lobby was quiet. I practically had the front desk to myself. After the usual pleasantries, the young gentleman behind the counter handed me my room key.

I was about to head for the elevator when I glanced at the room number. I froze.

Not because it was haunted. (At least, I hoped not.) But because I recognized the number immediately.

There was nobody else waiting, so I decided to indulge myself.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Morgan, sir.”

The poor guy instantly looked concerned, as though he’d accidentally assigned me the broom closet.

“Morgan,” I said, “I’m going to show you something fun. Do you like numbers?”

“Uh… sure?”

I’m convinced that’s what people say when they’re desperately trying to avoid offending a guest.

“Take the room number. Look at each of the digits. Write down separately the cubes of each of the digits.”

He pulled out the calculator app on his phone, dutifully cubed the three digits, and scribbled the results on a piece of paper. Then he looked up at me with the expression of someone wondering whether hotel training had covered this situation.

“Okay,” I said. “Now add them together.”

I wish I had recorded what happened next.

His eyes widened. He looked at the paper. Then at the room key. Then back at the paper.

It was like watching disbelief unfold in slow motion.

“No way!”

“Yep.”

“Are you a math professor?”

“Not really.”

“You knew this was going to happen?”

“I did.”

“That’s… uncanny!”

I just smiled, pocketed my room key, and walked toward the elevator, trying very hard to look mysterious instead of like a old man who gets far too excited about recreational mathematics.

As the elevator doors were closing, I could hear Morgan enthusiastically explaining the whole thing to a colleague who had just emerged from the back office.

That evening I triumphantly recounted the entire episode to my daughter.

She listened patiently.

Then she said exactly one word.

“Nerd!”

I felt oddly vindicated. After all, if you can amaze a hotel receptionist and simultaneously embarrass your daughter, that’s probably a pretty successful day.