Once when I was 10, 11 years old, I needed to call home from school. I had never used a payphone. I had perhaps rarely used our rotary home phone to dial out.

Once when I was 10, 11 years old, I needed to call home from school. I had never used a payphone. I had perhaps rarely used our rotary home phone to dial out. Of course it was after school hours, and a stressful personal crisis already, and no adult was hovering nearby to explain anything. I figured out how to put in the coins and enter the number on TouchTone, (just like I'd seen on TV) but I didn't know what a dial tone or ring tone sounded like, nor a busy signal, and the line was in use at home, so indeed it was a busy signal that I patiently listened to for several minutes. I believed it was ringing and nobody was picking up. By the time I was 21 and working at my first job, I was promoted and given a cubicle with a phone on the desk. I was quite anxious that it would ring and I wouldn't know what to do with the call. I was working for an Internet provider!