Anything Can Happen On A Landline!

My grandmother just turned ninety but lives alone and is in excellent health. After my grandfather died a few years ago, she joined an exercise group of other widows at the local senior center and they all got to be good friends and had excursions together. (This was before the health crisis.)

My brother and my two-year-old nephew stop by for a visit. [Nephew] finds Grandma’s phone — an actual corded landline — and manages to hit redial, calling her best friend. He babbles at her for a bit and then hangs the phone up and comes back into the other room where the adults are.

We find this out because the best friend calls Grandma back ten minutes later.

Best Friend: “[Grandma]! Are you okay?!”

Somewhere over the course of “conversation,” she became convinced that either she or my grandma was having a stroke because the words just didn’t make sense! It took a few minutes for my brother to put two and two (and two-year-old) together and figure out what had happened. Grandma now has a funny story about her precocious grandchild, and my nephew will be able to tell his grandkids someday that yes, one time he DID use a phone plugged into a wall.