And I STILL Can't Understand What She's Saying

Associated Press reports: "Ester Strogen, 82, of Canton, first leased two black rotary phones — the kind whose round dial is moved manually with your finger — in the 1960s."

You know where this story is going, don't you?

Truth be told, I've got one of those phones myself, and it works just fine, thank you very much. And besides: Have you ever tried to whack a teenaged boy with a cell phone? I thought so.

When #1 Son was in elementary school -- maybe in the early 1990s -- one of his friends was over at the house, and I told him he'd best call his mom and tell her he was there and what was up. About 10 minutes later he came back and explained that he couldn't make the phone work. It took me a while to figure out that he'd actually never seen one with a dial on it.

Then there's those of us who remember when the number wasn't "325", it was "FArmingdale 5." And, YES, we had a party line when I was a kid. No, really.

You just can't beat bakelite. Those are the phones that the roaches are going to be using to call each other after we've killed each other off.