…because in my sixth grade class as an 11-year-old, the teacher assigned each student a number alphabetically by last name, so I was in position seven, and the girl I had a crush on was in position eight. But just doodling"87" or “78” when I was caught up in the throes of infatuation felt too obvious; I should pick a three digit number, instead. And since I’d been competing with my friend to see who could memorize more digits of pi, “3” felt like the obvious digit to start any sequence of numbers, so I started using “387” whenever I needed a random number.
Later, when making my first email account, I read that most people just use their name plus a number. I felt using my first name was too obvious. My middle name would work, but it felt pretty commonplace as well. People normally shorten my middle name to just the first four letters, but what if I did the opposite? I’d leave those four letters out, altogether! Thus, I registered “ander387 at hotmail dot com”. I think I wound up signing up for ifMUD as ander387 originally, too.
I abandoned that username as a piece of embarrassing juvenilia more than 20 years ago.