plug wires in wrong order? Options

[BfloRandy]

Hello again, everyone.

I'm back with another noob question I'm afraid. I have begun my first tune up on my 75 2.0 with dual 40's... (you may groan as necessary) I'm going at it backwards, as I haven't yet gotten around to jacking the car up high enough to get myself underneath it. I have recently replaced the coil with a bosch blue. I just replaced the plugs with ngk b5es, and a new set of bosch wires. Today, I replaced the old dizzy with a new one, had no trouble with the install, but in doing so, I discovered that all this time, at TDC, the rotor has been pointing at #3. Car has run just fine, it seemed. So, I started the car up, leaving the plug wires as they had been, and messed around with the timing a bit. She was running very nicely. I shut her down, and switched the wires so that #1 was at TDC as it should be. Wouldn't start, even gave me a little backfire or two. I switched them all back, and she started up again. Frustrated, I repeated this process, knowing (thinking at least) that they were all backwards. This time, when I returned the wires to the way they were to start with (#3 on TDC) she wouldn't start either. I think I flooded the engine a bit in my fervor to will her to start with #1 in the right place. (by the way, the new fuel pump doesn't tick anywhere near as loudly while I'm trying to restart) So, after this long story, why the heck are my wires backwards??