Teacher tells his class when he were a lad there was only one phone per household.
Grossed out by the idea of sharing, they were most curious as to who got to pick the ringtone.
Times where if you wanted to talk to someone, you had to call their landline, and ask if they were in. If they were not, you had to wait until they either called you back (asking for them to do that first), or just try your luck another time. For them to call you back, you had to hang round your own landline phone, hoping nobody else would use it for long calls. You ended up memorising most of your friends diaries, so you knew where you might reach them.
(Now someone will mention party lines and asking to be connected, but I'm too young for that
)
