County Residents Hung Up on Area Code : Reaction: While many cringe at the thought of reclassification, others find the prospects attractive.

Call it Area Code Anxiety.

Almost as bad as the prospect of moving, it’s the threat that Ma Bell’s evil offspring may yank away your old familiar 714 area code and reclassify you--and half the people in your Rolodex--as a 909. Unpleasant anticipation washed over Orange County on Tuesday, with many residents praying that “they” would do it to Riverside and San Bernardino counties instead.

“You’re kidding! You’re kidding! Oh, my gosh! How’re they going to divide it up?” said Linda Lund, manager of the Ultimate Invitation, a posh stationery store at Fashion Island in Newport Beach. “I can see people who’ve just gotten their stationery printed won’t be so happy about this.”

Indeed. Just two days ago, Newport Beach mystery writer MacDonald Harris placed an order for $250 worth of stationery printed with his 714 telephone exchange.

“I ordered 1,000 large letterhead and 1,000 small letterhead and envelopes to match. . . ,” Harris moaned. “You can figure out how many letters I have to write every day between now and 1993.”

But others were thrilled by the possibility that a 909 area code for the high-rent district between Newport Beach and San Clemente could have instant snob appeal.

Lund speculated that clients who boast addresses in Corona del Mar and Newport Beach may soon be able to ask, “I live in 909, where do you live?”

But what if your area code winds up being outre ?

“Whatever they do, I want to be the area code that Newport Beach is in, ‘cause I tell people I’m from Newport Beach anyhow,” said comedian Todd Glass, who secretly resides in Fountain Valley. “I don’t want to end up with Riverside. That doesn’t attract any women at bars.”

If southern Orange County is reclassified as 909, it could force a whole new lingo for enclaves such as the Balboa Bay Club. In his novel “The Golden Orange,” author Joseph Wambaugh detailed the sagging silicone and seamy side of life among Orange County’s super-rich, noting that fortune-hunting women at the Bay Club classified potential husbands as “714 rich,” meaning simply wealthy, as opposed to “FFH rich,” meaning rich enough to make the Fortune 500.

“My suggestion would be for the Golden Orange to lobby for 967, not 909,” said Wambaugh, who soured on Newport Beach and has now become a 619.

“(Number) 967 is the California penal code section for conspiracy to defraud, and that would be a much more appropriate number for the Golden Orange,” Wambaugh said.

But Will Tate, who sells cellular telephones at Electronic Dreams in San Clemente, sees a potential windfall. If the area codes do change, cellular phone owners will have to bring their telephones in to be reprogrammed. Most stores charge between $25 and $50 to do that, Tate said.

“I don’t think anybody really cares for now, but when it happens, we’ll get a deluge of people. . . ,” Tate said. “It will drag people to our store, and I’m looking forward to that.”

Without exception, Orange County residents interviewed Tuesday said they would prefer to keep the county united in a single area code: 714. But with a sagging economy, a weak real estate market and the threat of war in the Persian Gulf, few seemed prepared to battle the telephone company for control of their electronic destiny.

“Nine-o-nine has a nice ring to it,” said Martin Bensen, artistic director of the South Coast Repertory Theater. “It’s hard to get all worked up over the issue. But now I’ll have to cram another number into this number-sodden brain.”

“I’m still one of those people who remembers the days when it was ‘Tuxedo 1234’ to call a cab,” Bensen said.

Times correspondent John Nalick also contributed to this report.

AREA CODES: THE POSSIBILITIES

Projecting a shortage of seven-digit phone numbers in the region, phone companies Tuesday proposed three plans to restructure the 714 area code:

* Under the plan favored by GTE California and Pacific Bell, all of Orange County now in the 714 area code would keep that number. Virtually all of the rest of the 714 region--in eastern Los Angeles County and western Riverside and San Bernardino counties--would take a new 909 code, as of January, 1993.

* In a plan that would yield a more equitable distribution of the region’s telephone lines, both for now and in the future, the northern half of Orange County, above Irvine, would keep the 714 area code, while the southern end would become 909, along with the Inland Empire.

* Under a third “overlay” plan, everyone who now has a 714 area code would keep it, while new customers would all get the 909 code--regardless of where they are located. This approach has never been tried in the United States. It would also mean that everyone in the region, regardless of area code, would have to dial 10 digits to make calls within the region.